I believe I retracted a post I made, when I began to think that the reports indicated that she was breaking up over Calif.
That was on the Sunday after she crashed.
My hat is off to you. You are a better man than most. I could not believe how some people were acting over this. They were so adamant that the shuttle could not have broken up over California. What I think happen was TLBSHOW posted the letter from Don Nelson to President Bush outlining his problems with the shuttle program. The letter did not bash W at all. But out of fear of criticism of Bush and that somehow this would link W to the Columbia accident the Bushbots went into overdrive with their spin machine when there was no need to spin at all. First of all no main stream politician was going to commit political suicide by blaming the President for the Columbia accident. The American public would not stand for it. Secondly everyone knows that the President does not, nor is expected to, oversee the shuttle liftoff and retrieval. All he can do is rely on his advisers and the personal at NASA to do the best jobs that they can. Unless it is a mission he has authorized personally or he has vital information in his hands that there is problem he is not going to be involved in the day to day operations of NASA.
After the Don Nelson letter posting no matter what TLBSHOW said he was dogged piled. Most of the threads after that were nothing but flame wars with some good articles and observations about the shuttle being posted on them. But one had to sort through a lot of crap to find them.