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NASA did not know of this debris incident until the day AFTER launch, when they completed a routine frame-by-frame review of their high-speed film of the launch.

During Columbia's launching Jan. 16, long-range tracking cameras showed a relatively large piece of foam debris falling away from the shuttle's external tank and striking the underside of the orbiter's left wing. The debris is believed to have measured about 20 inches in its longest dimension. http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030203analysis/

You folks have to remember that ever aspect of the flight is monitored. There isn't any kind of "looking at the tapes the next day" except to re look. They are watching it when it happens. They know when it happens.

That having been said, I do not think that what they saw was abort worthy. And that's the bad part. They had become accustomed to the foam falling off the tanks. But they did see it when it happened.

http://ltp.arc.nasa.gov/space/team/journals/katnik/sts87-12-23.html

"Damage numbering up to forty tiles is considered normal on each mission due to ice dropping off of the external tank (ET) and plume re-circulation causing this debris to impact with the tiles. But the extent of damage at the conclusion of this mission was not "normal." The pattern of hits did not follow aerodynamic expectations, and the number, size and severity of hits were abnormal. Three hundred and eight hits were counted during the inspection, one-hundred and thirty two (132) were greater than one inch. Some of the hits measured fifteen (15) inches long with depths measuring up to one and one-half (1 1/2) inches. Considering that the depth of the tile is two (2) inches, a 75% penetration depth had been reached. Over one hundred (100) tiles have been removed from the Columbia because they were irreparable.

During the STS-87 mission, there was a change made on the external tank. Because of NASA's goal to use environmentally friendly products, a new method of "foaming" the external tank had been used for this mission and the STS-86 mission.
It is suspected that large amounts of foam separated from the external tank and impacted the orbiter. This caused significant damage to the protective tiles of the orbiter."

http://www.arnold.af.mil/aedc/newsreleases/1999/99-041.htm

"According to NASA, during several previous Space Shuttle flights, including the shuttle launched Nov. 29, 1998, the shuttle external tank experienced a significant loss of foam from the intertank. The material lost caused damage to the thermal protection high-temperature tiles on the lower surface of the shuttle orbiter.

During Columbia's launching Jan. 16, long-range tracking cameras showed a relatively large piece of foam debris falling away from the shuttle's external tank and striking the underside of the orbiter's left wing.

I'm sorry to disagree with you, Jael, but I watched each of the briefings they had over the weekend, in their entirety. The NASA spokesmen said, point blank, that they did not know of the debris hitting the orbiter until the day after launch when they did their routine frame-by-frame check of the films. That is precisely what the men said and, if necessary, I will look for a transcript of the briefings to date (if they exist anywhere on the web) to prove it to you.

>>...There isn't any kind of "looking at the tapes the next day" except to re look. They are watching it when it happens. They know when it happens...<<

They DO NOT know "when it happens".

There are video cameras and there are high-speed film cameras. The film cameras have to be offloaded and the film processed at the lab. Then the engineers have to look at EACH one FRAME BY FRAME (picture by picture for the laymen out there).

When I worked there as a engineering/documentary photographer, I counted over 120 cameras we had on one launch alone.

Film cameras run anywhere from 96 frames per second to over 400 frames per second. The long range tracking telescopes usually had film cameras running at 96 fps (at least when I worked there)(They also had video cameras but your're not going to get the "motion-stopping" ability with standard video which runs at 30fps or 60 fields per second).

The debris event in this mission occured about 70 seconds into the flight. That means that an engineer had to look through 6912 frames of film from just ONE CAMERA to get to this event. There are several long range tracking sites at the Cape.

Launch pad cameras cannot be accessed for several hours after launch until the pad has been safed. Then it takes another several hours to access all the cameras in their blast-proof housings, download the film and take it to the labs. It takes hours to process the film.

It's NOT instantaneous folks.

There isn't any kind of "looking at the tapes the next day" except to re look.

Now, Jael, I know for a fact that you have been told by a person on this thread who works for NASA that that statement is NOT true. This very day.

Which makes me wonder why you keep saying it.

So the foam insulation problem is a case of trying to be environmentally concious? So we now can blame the enviro-Nazis for the Columbia accident?

As much as the idea of passing the blame to those nut-jobs, I would think that NASA would have gained a clue after something like 20+ missions with foam insulation loss being a problem.