You did good work but your basic premises in re: 80 seconds for Challenger and 83 for Columbia were wrong as far as when mission control was aware of the malfuction/problem.
So you got blasted and it was too late for you to abort...you were already in orbit. Next time go through your pre-flight a little more thoroughly, you will be pleased with the reception a new and factually accurate post gets.
Even if they had seen the insulation "hit" the instant it happened (and it happened so fast it was only visible on the slow-motion "instant replay" later -- someone watching that camera's monitor would have missed it "live"), there's another issue.
It just didn't look that bad at the time. It certainly wouldn't have been the sort of issue that screamed "MUST ABORT!". In fact, even the next day, after they had a discussion about the video, based on all they could see and all they knew from previous flights, they concluded that it didn't look all that serious. It's only in retrospect that it's suddenly looking Really Serious. (And even now it may possibly turn out to be a red herring that had nothing to do with the failure.)
And they *can't* and *shouldn't* abort any time something looks "odd" or a "possible" problem. The abort sequence itself is untested, risky, and may result in the loss of the craft. One thread quoted one of the astronauts saying that in the simulator they managed to land safely in less than half of the abort simulations -- the rest of the time they crashed for being unable to make it back to an appropriate runway.
Aborting is NOT something they should do lightly, or "just in case" something appears out of the ordinary. It should be saved for *undeniable* emergencies during launch, when the danger of proceeding truly outweighs the danger of aborting.
It's like leaping out of a commercial airliner with a parachute. It's not something you do except in the gravest of circumstances -- hearing or seeing "something funny" is not a good enough reason.