[Jael]

NASA has already comfirmed it was insulation from the fuel tank.

[El Gato]

NASA has already comfirmed it was insulation from the fuel tank.

Do you know how they confirmed it? I guess it could be from pictures of the tank separation from the orbiter, which they film from on board the shuttle. Presumably you could ID the spot with the missing insulation.

Now does anyone know how dense that insulation is, and if it's brittle or more flexible? Like I stated above, I'm beginning to think this "Tile damage during the ascent" is a dead end, and not the cause of the breakup on reentry. What that cause might be, I don't really know.

[Cold Heat]

NASA has already comfirmed it was insulation from the fuel tank.

You have mis-intewrpreted what NASA said. The truth is that they presented the problem to a set of engineers with the "assumption" that the insulation was the factor and they are working it through to see if it fits.

They have not made a determination as of yet. This is a exercise to determine if the insulation could have caused it. Nothing more.....