> Why, given that the foam strike had occurred at a force massively out of test conditions had NASA proceeded with re-entry?
What was the alternative?
Columbia could not have made it to ISS.
Columbia could not have repaired the damage in orbit.
Columbia could not have lasted, after two weeks in space, long enough to launch a rescue mission.
I know the "In Flight Options Assessment" said they could launch at an accelerated pace but the assessment assumes that it's ok to launch another vehicle with the same problem, no fix, and no completed analysis of the cause.
Yeah, they suspected the external tank bipod foam, but WHY did the foam come off? Was it a fluke? Had some unknown factor not present in previous external tank bipod foam applications but now present in all external tank bipod foam applications manifested?
>Two major assumptions, apart from the already stated assumption that the damage had to be visible, have to be recognized – the first is that there were no problems during the preparation and rollout of Atlantis, and the second is the question of whether NASA and the government would have deemed it acceptable to launch Atlantis with exposure to the same events that had damaged Columbia. At this point, at least two of the last three flights (STS-112 and STS-107) had bipod ramp foam problems, and the flight in-between these two, STS-113, was a night launch without adequate imaging of the External Tank during ascent.
https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/caib/news/report/pdf/vol2/pa... (page 397)
That's not a valid assumption.
This is from a pre-flight safety report for STS-113
>“More than 100 External Tanks have flown with only 3 documented instances of significant foam loss on a bipod ramp”
STS-1 through STS-111, April 1981 - June 2002: three "significant" bipod foam losses
STS-112, October 2002: significant foam loss
STS-113, November 2002: night time, but they saw 112 and went "oh shit" and wrote a report
STS-107, January 2003: yet another, fatal, significant foam loss
If two of the last three flights had foam problems and the one that didn't only didn't because you couldn't see if it did, and over 100 of the preceding flights only had three, you don't risk four more lives.
You start designing a memorial at Arlington.
The alternative is to try.
Apollo 13 probably seemed pretty hopeless. They didn't just say "sorry fellas, maybe you'll get lucky and make it, good luck."
The late great Bob Hoover said, "If you’re faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible." You keep trying until you can't anymore.
Saying "well, maybe they'll survive," and not even telling them, is not the move when you have nearly a month to figure something out.
Nobody has made a decent proposal of how they could have been saved, the only "answers" being basically hail marys.