[Fitzcarraldo]

What caused the insulation to break off in the first place?

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I cannot take NASA's "investigation" seriously. They have already ruled out a cause before the pieces of wreckage are gathered? I thought investigations were to gather the evidence BEFORE drawing conclusions.

[leadpenny]

Jay Barbree coming up now on Imus. MSNBC

[Falcon4.0]

By my calculations of 1/2 mass X velocity squared, the 2.67lbs foam with an impact speed of 1500 feet per second gives you a force of 3375000lbs or 1687.5 tons of force.
Sounds like a resonable explination for tile damage to me.

[Flyer]

Speaking after a memorial service for the seven Columbia astronauts, Corrigan said the program should be suspended until safety issues are resolved.

It will take decades and major leaps in technology before all the safety issues are resolved. Present day space travel is dangerous. Very dangerous. And some brave people are willing to take that risk.

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[OldFriend]

I suspect the computers were not programmed to deal with a roll outside their parameters. When they tried to compensate for the leftward roll it went too far, exposing the shuttle to the intense heat and we know the rest.

Just this uninformed, uneducated guess from an old lady freeper.

[brityank]

"Every time they've lost seven people - and for what?" said Christopher Corrigan, 42.

So my great-great-grandkids can go on vacation on the Moon or on Mars, dummy!

In case you fail to realize, mankind lost a whole lot of folks developing boats that go to sea; now we think nothing of taking a cruise across the oceans of the world. Mankind lost a whole lot of folks developing planes that fly through th air; now we think nothing of taking a flight across the country for business and vacations in foreign lands.

Thank God for Men and Women like the Shuttle 14.

[dasboot]

A question:

I have been reading comparisons between the DynaSoar and the shuttle. The DynaSoar was to have used a "skip/glide" re-entry regimen to dissipate the heat of its return over several additional orbits, as opposed to the shuttle's all-at-once drop to the runway.

Would this skip/glide have been, or can it be, a contingency for heat-shield impaired craft? Does the uncertainty of making it to an adequate runway automatically rule this out? Can a shuttle manage, with any degree of survivability, to perform a ditch in the water at 200mph? (Assuming, of course that THE DUFUSSES WILL PROVIDE FOR ACTUAL ASSESSMENT OF THE VEHICLE.)

[motor_racer]

Just a bit of irony to offer here. Last Saturday morning I was watching Fox News. At about 8:50 they did an alert that they would be covering the Columbia's landing. Utterly uneventful. So I surfed over to my favorite geek channel, Discovery Science, to watch a program about junk floating in orbit, where it came from, the risks to spacecraft it poses, and about other junk falling out of orbit.

25 minutes later I was in my car and heard the news flash.