[bvw]

Sure it's emotional ... we're talking about technical, engineering issues. You brought in the term "super heros" -- what do you mean by it, in the contect of this discussion.

[myrabach]

The term "super heros" was a term used by a NASA representative on Saturday. This is how the astronauts are viewed by those at NASA. If the astronauts have this place in the minds of those at NASA... why would NASA treat them as "routine"?

The way we perceive our work and the people we work with certainly impacts the decisions we make. I submit that the way this "community" interacted with one another, takes on a whole other dimension in which the people at NASA would have done everything possible to successfully bring those 7 back safely.

These missions are not only technical and engineering, but human as well. To discount that makes the decision makers at NASA something less than human and nothing in any of the evidence convinces me that is the case.