Charles Angelich wrote in a message to Mike Ross:

MR> Today the Columbia Investigation Board released test results which 
MR> show spectacular damage with a 700 kph piece of foam to the "TOP" 
MR> of the wing and it confirms what I now finally see is missing in 
MR> the event's replay.

CA> Not to belittle your comments in any way but frankly who cares?

It made for an interesting few seconds on the tv news last night...

CA> NASA keeps waving this as a huge mystery as though solving it will
CA> make everything OK. 

CA> There are contingency plans and there were requests made for hires
CA> pix of the shuttle while it was in orbit to examine it for damage
CA> and they were denied arbitrarilly by a person or persons that I 
CA> would put on trial for homicide if it was up to me.

Agreed.  It was also brought out on the news last night that one engineer
in particular had put that request out there.  They gave his name,  but
didn't mention who it was that he'd sent the email to,  and that denied it.

CA> NASA can't distract me with "watch Mr. Wizard" cr*p.

Now _there's_ a reference.  

CA> They _killed_ those people with their incompetent behaviour and 
CA> should be arrested and made to defend themselves for the crimes
CA> they committted. 

CA> NASA has outlived it's useful life and should be shut down period. 

Also agreed,  but while that's going on we also need to vastly simplify the
processes involved in giving any private enterprise the chance to take over
what they're doing.  As things stand right now,  the red tape and
bureaucratic BS that has to be dealt with to allow anybody else to get into
space is what's killing the private side of the business.  If they don't
fix that,  then we'll end up seeing it done in some other country. 
Ecuador,  maybe?  :-(

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