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When today's NASA guys saw that fateful piece of foam hitting the wing leading edge, they firmly burried their heads into sand (e.g. first asking, but then quickly cancelling request that spy guys use telescopes on their birds to look into the state of the orbiter).


Your account of what happened is woefully inadequate. The people who 'saw' the foam hit the orbiter did everything they could to get the damage inspected. It was the management that was the roadblock. Grouping everybody that was involved under the 'NASA guys' label is an unfair characterization of people that did their damnest to bring their collegues and friends back home safely.

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Apollo era NASA would try to do something: in-orbit repair, launch another shuttle, ask Russians to launch a Progress or Soyuz with oxigen and water to buy some time, something. Perhaps those seven people would die anyway (they probably would), but they would have died fighting.


The major difference is political attitudes and budget. Apollo era didn't have nearly the pressure (from a budget standpoint) that they do today. That was one of the reasons the requests were denied. In retrospect, I'm sure every manager involved wishes they could redo what happened. The problem was, the data available and past experience did not conclusively point to a total vehicle loss. The management made a decision (a very wrong one) that they were forced to based on those boundary conditions.

- Tim