Wirt wrote (in part)
"......Secondly, people have repeatedly mentioned how the crew was '"doomed
from the
beginning" but didn't know it. That too is characteristic of all failures.
The seed of the failure always proves to be latent in the system, residing
there for perhaps months or years, not merely a few days."
____________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________

Wirt this reminds me of an accident involving a JAL 747 on a domestic run
years ago. Remember when the Cpt lost control of one of the control surfaces
(rudder? Elevator?) and vainly tried to keep it flying for 30 minutes or so
until it crashed?

Turned out to be a bulkhead that Boeing repaired years ago - that finally
gave way - which was caused by too rough a landing, neccessitating  the
repair in the first place.

Someone asked why the space shuttle couldn't have flown to the ISS - and I
heard on the radio that they didn't bring enough fuel. They calculate their
fuel needs down to gallon.

I remember years ago one of the shuttles (it was Columbia I believe) had a
lot of tiles missing and they positioned themselves to be photographed by a
spy satellite - nothing much more was said about the process ;-)

Something equally plausible - is that NASA knew something **could** have
been wrong with the debris on liftoff but they just "crossed their fingers"
since nothing could have been done anyway...

I also heard yesterday with the swamps of Louisiana they that will most
likely be finding debris for the next 10 years - or more. Imagine, an area
the size of West Virginia being he debris field. And imagine how long it
would take an object to fall nearly 40 miles.

Bill

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