A rescue of the crew was unlikely

Washington Times ^ | 2/03/03 | Marcia Dunn, AP

[Sidebar Moderator]

Knock it off.

[Bobby777]

thank you ... wasn't interested in it in the first place ...

[Moonman62]

I did find several other missions that had landing weights from about 200,000 to 220,000 pounds for other orbiters. I also found a Columbia flight that came back essentially empty at 220,000 pounds. The Double Spacehab weighed almost 30,000 pounds, possible putting the landing weight of this mission at 250,000 pounds? That would make this the highest weight reentry ever, and the hottest.

If NASA had recognized this problem in time, I wonder if they would have been able to disconnect and abandon the Spacehab module and any other useless weight before reentry.

[John Jamieson]

Possibly, I don't know if its bolted in or on some sort of piros.

Here's some better numbers:

Landing weight of sts107 = 232788 (from another freeper)
sts96 = 219890
sts98 = 198909
STS-99: 225,669
STS-97: 227,780
STS-50: 228,127

Unless there has been a heavier reentry I couldn't find, STS107 was subjected to about 6% more heat load than any other Shuttle in the history of the program. Other Shuttle flights may have been far more tolerant of any tile damage than this one.

Jan 16th was perfect for ice formation, low 40s 100%RH.