One of my best friends is with NASA, in a management role, and is on the 3-month special team looking into what happened.
The Saturday when Columbia broke apart, the engineers at Michoud (where the external tanks are built) looked at the evidence, and frankly -- it pointed elsewhere. At that time, the two-and-a-half pounds of urethane foam that struck the left wing of the shuttle did not seem to be the cause of the problem. The tiles were expected to be strong enough to handle the impact easily.
Unfortunately, we may never know what really happened, other than the left wing was breached somehow. The search and recovery teams are finding garbage bags full of shuttle pieces the size of a quarter. A forensic analysis will be impossible.
As for any insight into the foam, Michoud's people did grumble a bit when they had to start using a different expanding gas for the urethane foam because the older (possibly better) stuff had aerosols that were not environmentally friendly. They've never been thrilled with the newer stuff for a variety of reasons.
Please don't beat up NASA for this type of mishap. Spaceflight is a dangerous business.
However, you should criticize previous national leadership for turning the "can-do" NASA team of Apollo into an organization of bureaucrats. They built the shuttle so they could build the International Space Station -- and they built the International Space Station so that the shuttle would have something to fly to.
New NASA director O'Keefe has been better than I had hoped so far. At least now, they're looking in the right places -- getting back to the Moon, and going to Mars.
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One of my best friends is with NASA, in a management role, and is on the 3-month special team looking into what happened. The Saturday when Columbia broke apart, the engineers at Michoud (where the external tanks are built) looked at the evidence, and frankly -- it pointed elsewhere. At that time, the two-and-a-half pounds of urethane foam that struck the left wing of the shuttle did not seem to be the cause of the problem. The tiles were expected to be strong enough to handle the impact easily. Unfortunately, we may never know what really happened, other than the left wing was breached somehow. The search and recovery teams are finding garbage bags full of shuttle pieces the size of a quarter. A forensic analysis will be impossible. As for any insight into the foam, Michoud's people did grumble a bit when they had to start using a different expanding gas for the urethane foam because the older (possibly better) stuff had aerosols that were not environmentally friendly. They've never been thrilled with the newer stuff for a variety of reasons. Please don't beat up NASA for this type of mishap. Spaceflight is a dangerous business. However, you should criticize previous national leadership for turning the "can-do" NASA team of Apollo into an organization of bureaucrats. They built the shuttle so they could build the International Space Station -- and they built the International Space Station so that the shuttle would have something to fly to. New NASA director O'Keefe has been better than I had hoped so far. At least now, they're looking in the right places -- getting back to the Moon, and going to Mars.