[Stefan Stackhouse]

Answer these questions, if you can:

Once a shuttle enters the orbit that it did, can it still reach the International Space Station?

If it can, how many Soyuz capsules are on there (if the answer is less than 4, who do you leave behind?)?

If it can't, how long does it take to get a semi-warm shuttle launched (hint; Atlantis was due for a March 1 launch)?

If that shuttle can be launched in time, how do you get at least 9 people into a shuttle that seats 7?

Where are the replacement tiles supposed to be stored? How is the crew going to heat the adhesive to get these replacement tiles to stick?

I'm waiting....

The answer is that NASA tries to improvise, just like they did with Apollo 13. Maybe it will work, maybe not, but you don't give up without trying. Seven lives and a $2 billion spacecraft are too costly to give up without trying.

[steveegg]

Here is each option that was possible (note that the ISS is not an option because Columbia simply couldn't get to it no matter what):

• Abort the mission as soon as the boosters are separated. In hindsight, this may be what they should have done. However, they had a similar situation 2 flights ago, where the chunk of external tank foam hit a booster with no apparent damage. Upon examination, no real damage was found. Morever, Columbia would have faced similar stresses had it aborted.

• Rush Atlantis out a month early to repair any tile damage, or failing that, rescue the crew. First things first, NASA would be asked to rush a shuttle into orbit from a fleet that has nearly a zero on-time percentage when they don't know why 2 tanks launched chunks at the rest of the system. While there is a built-in reserve of consumables, it wouldn't have come close to lasting until Atlantis' scheduled March 1 launch.

  Then comes the problem of getting the tiles (assuming they broght the right ones; each is custom-cut) on. Adhesives don't work too well when you hit triple digits below zero. If they don't have the right ones, there's nothing else on board that can withstand the temperatures of re-entry.

  As for rescue, 7's the limit for the shuttle. At a bare minimum, you'd have 9 up there.

  Using what they could extrapolate from 2 frames of film shot at a distance, they thought the tiles would withstand that strike as well as the booster did.

• Bring it back essentially on schedule. This is what they did. They apparently underestimated the damage done. By the time that the problems became apparent, it was far too late to do anything. You can't re-orbit a shuttle once you begin the descent.