[Chad Fairbanks]

I know about the loss of tiles being normal - I think we are both in agreement on much of what you say, but so far the loss of critical heat tiles (i.e. in an area where it was not thought that such catastrophic results could ever occur a sort of 'who would have thunk THAt could happen???' type scenario...) seems to be the most likely cause (pending more detailed info, of course) for now... of course, I'm only speculating - I just wanted to know if you were looking at it differently :0)

:0)

[betty boop]

I think we are both in agreement on much of what you say, but so far the loss of critical heat tiles (i.e. in an area where it was not thought that such catastrophic results could ever occur a sort of 'who would have thunk THAt could happen???' type scenario...) seems to be the most likely cause (pending more detailed info, of course) for now

Agreed, CF. In logic, there is a distinction to be made between "proximate cause" and "sufficient cause." Heat tile failure may have been the proximate cause. Which means there is a cause that lies behind it -- the sufficient cause. That is, what caused the heat tile problem to achieve such a critical state? Which may have been the incident that occurred at take-off. Or maybe not. Again, on-board systems on the pre-re-entry test series were said to have reported all systems "go."