[ladyinred]

Accident. That is what I am thinking too Luis. People are playing the blame game already before anyone even knows what happened. I don't believe NASA would have sent the shuttle up defective in the first place, or that they would ignore a real problem like the incident at launching if they knew it was dangerous.
Accidents do happen. It is terrible, but true.

[Howlin]

Late last December (2001) I was coming home from Lynchburg, on 58 that goes across west to east the bottom of Virginia.

Late at night; out in the country, two lane road, hilly; I wasn't driving fast because you know on roads with driveway access you might come over a hill and somebody might be pulling out of a driveway.

I topped a hill, and as soon as I did, there were two hunting dogs in my lane just below the peak of the hill.

The second I saw them, I knew I couldn't avoid them. I hit and killed them both.

It was an ACCIDENT. Accidents happen. We don't need to beat it to death to figure that out.

[mikrofon]

Finger-pointing is easy, but very counter-productive .... solid fact-finding and lesson-learning from this terrible experience is warranted now.

It was a bit disconcerting that Columbia did not have EVA suits on-board, or that NASA has no facility for in-space inspection of the state of the craft, but I don't think they purposely deprive the crews of such equipment or deliberately would put them in harm's way.