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BBFH seems to be saying that the NASA guy didn't answer the question of why/whether or not they had scheduled a space walk to detect potential damage sustained on launch.

You seem to know a fair bit about this, so I'll ask you - they said they didn't have the robotic arm, did they have the necessary equipment to perform a spacewalk in the first place?

Secondly, if they had performed one and discovered significant damage it has already been pointed out that there wasn't much they could do about it given the fact that they couldn't make it to the ISS and the difficulties of launching another shuttle in time to make a difference, as you've outlined.

Nevertheless, it would have been nice to know what they were dealing with so that they would have a better idea of what would/could happen during reentry.

The NASA guy made a point of how they had investigated on the ground (with people experience with the tiles) and thought it would be okay. Thanks for your insights.

While I know a bit about physics and the layout of the shuttle, I don't know exactly what was on Columbia with regard to spacesuits. Since the arm was not on board, the only way that someone could have gotten from the cargo bay over the doors and around to the underside of the wing was to have a thruster pack (in space, once you leave a solid object with just a tether, you're only going to either continue in that vector, stop, or head back toward where you started from on the reciprocal vector). According to some reports, there were none on board.

Had the crew been able to make it to the the underside of the wing, the only things they could have done as far as damage control were to try to straighten out any tiles that may have been bent (which only might have worked had the back edge been loosened) or pluck any foam that might have got stuck between the tiles.

It definitely would have been nice to know close-up what they were up against. As cold as it may sound, NASA will learn from this and have some plan in place. As the other three shuttles are capable of reaching the ISS at least on a launch (I never learned whether they would be able to reach it from a "traditional" shuttle orbit), there will at least be the ISS to hang around for a while while things are examined in detail and a plan for getting the crew and (hopefully) the shuttle back to Earth is made.