Wrong. Mr. Dittemore (sp?) yesterday said that he himself was among the group that reviewed the videos of the launch to assess the possibility of damage to the tiles. They had 2 weeks to abort the re-entry. I just have the feeling that someone had to have recommended modifying the mission to address any possible damage and put the safety of the crew first instead of completing the mission at hand.
Just a feeling...an opinion.
But you are presuming they'd be capable of repairing the problem when it seems they didn't successfully diagnose it. Once you're up there, you're up there.
I do think there are probably contingency plans in place for any mission where the spacecraft had sustained significant damage. I suspect they didn't consider this significant. And as to the left wing indicator, it had been reported that it had gone out on SIX previous Columbia flights during re-entry. And it made it down safely each previous time. The insulation hitting the wing *may* have been totally irrelevant to why the craft burned up.
I frankly don't have much confidence in NASA being able to tell us what exactly went wrong with 100% certainty. What's left of the craft is so burned and broken and scattered that a meaningful piecing together of the parts might be impossible.
Wrong. Mr. Dittemore (sp?) yesterday said that he himself was among the group that reviewed the videos of the launch to assess the possibility of damage to the tiles. They had 2 weeks to abort the re-entry.
You are wrong because you are talking about something totally different. A pre-orbital abort would have been on take off prior to reaching orbital altitude. You are talking about re-entry after two weeks in space. Two very different things.
Wrong. Mr. Dittemore (sp?) yesterday said that he himself was among the group that reviewed the videos of the launch to assess the possibility of damage to the tiles. They had 2 weeks to abort the re-entry
I think we are talking about two different aspects of the problem. My comment is that a sub-orbital abort would have required an impossibly quick reaction. You are talking about a re-entry abort. These are different matters.
Yes, they could have aborted re-entry, but then what?
If re-entry was considered dangerous, would they have sent a rescue shuttle? I've read in other posts that the tiles are repairable in space, but this shuttle lacked the equipment for an under the body space walk. I've also read that reaching the space station wasn't possible.