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Hi, I've been reading some of your posts on this and I was wondering if you could answer a few questions?

What do you think about the freon-less foam that started coming off in hunks a while back? 1997? I keep reading from NASA that the concern was financial, in replacing the tiles, that they didn't consider it a flight saftey issue. Any thoughts?

What is the last point (from liftoff) that they could of aborted the mission?

I'll take one of your questions: I believe that the last 3 emergency abort landing sites are some place in Spain, Ben Gurion airport in Israel, and out at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean (God help somebody if they have to try for one of these!).

From what I've read about the change in foam. It was a move to keep the happy with the green weenies. And it sounds like they sacrificed the strength and integrity of the insulation in favor of being PC. Which to me is a criminal act. As for the last possible moment of aborting, I'm not sure of the specific altitude, but I do know that depending on where they are in the lauhc phase they have several airports around the world where they can land if they have to punch off the external fuel tank before they achieve orbit. Off the top of my head they emergency landing sites are in Spain, Australia, Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga., and of course Edwards AFB and right there at KSC. As for the flight safety issues, IMHO, with the yearly reduction in the NASA budget, I hink that the safety guys just kept dumbing down the bar for what was "unacceptable risk" in operating the Shuttle Program.