I am glad that you and those currently in charge at NASA were not in charge during g. If you were we would have 3 more dead astronauts because they would just have been written off as "NOTHING COULD HAVE BEEN DONE".
"...during g."
Sorry, I don't know what you are referring to by "g", so can't respond to that part of your comment.
As for the remainder of your comment, sometimes one encounters an individual whose thought processes seem to be dense enough to act as a heat shield! Let me make this as clear as possible:
- "Nothing that could be done..." is not MY position, it is NASA's.
- The purpose of this thread is to present photos and NASA's comments about them, and let readers of the post draw their own conclusions. I am merely REPORTING what I have read and heard in the briefings.
- In their briefings, to date, NASA spokesmen said they did not know of the debris hitting the wing until the day after launch. They then needed an additional several days to fully analyze the incident and make a determination as to what effect the foam hitting the wing might have. Their determination at the time, with the evidence they had at their disposal, was that the incident did not pose a hazard to the orbiter.
- Even if they determined that it was a hazard, there were few, if any options available to them to deal with the problem. The shuttle could not dock with the ISS OR WITH ANOTHER SHUTTLE. It did not have enough provisions on board to keep the crew alive long enough to attempt a rescue mission. (Provisions are not just food and water. They include oxygen to breath, fuel to maneuver the orbiter, and perhaps other items not known to us.) There was no way to check for damage, and no way to repair any damage that might have been found.
- At a briefing yesterday, a member of the media asked whether it might have been possible to try a reentry approach that reduced stress on the orbiter to the absolute minimum. NASA's answer was that they already use the least stressful approach, because the goal is to re-fly the orbiters many times. So they do everything they can to minimize stress and heat loads on every flight.
Lastly, you the hell are you or anyone in the general public to dare proceed from a premise that assumes the NASA flight folks would deliberately sacrific the lives of crews who are their friends and colleagues? Those folks know the crews — know each other in some ways more intimately that the crew's families. But the folks who work earth-side on those flights are human beings just like the rest of us. They are subject to fatigue, misjudgements, lack of foresight, budget constraints, and other impediments to success just like any other human being on the planet. The wonder is not that they fail from time to time, but that they succeed as often as they do.
Yeah, too bad you weren't in charge, then none of this would have happened, right?