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"THERE WAS NOTHING THEY COULD DO"

This seems to be some kind of mantra to absolve NASA and to place this accident in the category of the acceptable risks of space flight. To me it always begs the question, "Why are we sending up shuttles with no hope of survival for the crew if the tiles become damaged during launch?" This is the question that needs to be answered. There are various means of saving the crew, but they all require preparation before the launch, and, obviously, none of them were done on this mission. A rather sad way to treat such brave souls. May the Columbia crew RIP.

This seems to be some kind of mantra to absolve NASA and to place this accident in the category of the acceptable risks of space flight. To me it always begs the question, "Why are we sending up shuttles with no hope of survival for the crew if the tiles become damaged during launch?" This is the question that needs to be answered. There are various means of saving the crew, but they all require preparation before the launch, and, obviously, none of them were done on this mission. A rather sad way to treat such brave souls. May the Columbia crew RIP.

Many shuttles have gone up and lost tiles either on the way up or the way down. It isn't unusual, and it is expected.

Is "there was nothing they could do" the entire quote or is it taken out of the context of something kind of like "once we realized that communications were lost, there was nothing we could do." I suspect that there is some serious misquoting going here, especially given the very candid interview I saw yesterday.

Everybody wants this to not have happened. But for some reason, it did. It remains that space travel is inherently dangerous. There's a series of perfect events that must take place to get there. There's another series of perfect events that must occur to get back. Occasionally, something isn't perfect - that's the human side of this. That's why space travel is voluntary, not mandatory. If it weren't dangerous, we'd all be doing it.

There are various means of saving the crew, but they all require preparation before the launch, and, obviously, none of them were done on this mission. A rather sad way to treat such brave souls. May the Columbia crew RIP.

What various means are available for saving the crew and which ones were not done on this mission?