[FReepaholic]

>>...Could they have docked with the space station and waited for another shuttle to pick them up...<<

Nope. Columbia was too heavy for a mission to the ISS.

[Atchafalaya]

If damage would have been determined in orbit to be prohibitve for reentry I'm sure that Columbia could have been parked "up" to buy time. If it is determined that that the cause of the breakup was a failure of the left wing (not root cause mind you, foam, ice, whatever) and the engineers on terra firma said no problem, my question is did anyone go outside (shuttle) and look at it? A picture is worth a thousand words, a visual is what I'd want!