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Since you are invoking someone named Captain Queeg and keys to food lockers, I can guess you have never done a formal accident investigation. I have done a couple of big ones.

1) You don't throw away THE most direct evidence you have like a set of photos of impact showing a high probability of damage that could be the root cause of the loss of vehicle. 2) The other possible causes should have been included immediately, but weren't.

That adds up to 2 significant problems in two successive days with the investigation by NASA.

On top of that, Ron Dittemore has made many technical mistakes in his presentations, such as repeatedly calling the failure analysis process "reverse engineering", and repeatedly calling the liberated pieces of foam "tiles".

NASA has a lot of problems, not the least of which is explaining away the 1997 report by NASA engineer Greg Katnik.

And another thing. I would appreciate if you would curb the insults too. Otherwise keep them, and your posts, to yourself, OK?

NASA does have a protective re-entry method.

May of 2000, Atlantis suffered similar damage to tiles and were instructed ( or programmed? I'm not familiar with their procedure ) to adjust their re-entry angle because of NASA concerns.

http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/3/021116-3583-010.html

Seems to me that landing gear door damage (by errant foam fragments) would be a likely culprit. Breach that space with a jet of superheated material during reentry, and the tire rapidly reaches an acutely overpressurized state causing the mother of all blowouts--in the gear well.

Structural damage to the wing, either directly, or as the result of further exposure to reentry temperatures of unshielded structural elements could cause wing failure, loss of attitude control, and breakup of the orbiter.

I'm glad they are looking at all possibilities, but I think we are back to the basics on this one, much like the O rings on Challenger.