The crew were told of an issue

but basically that it wasn’t worth mentioning but only did as the press would ask about it when they got back.

From those who spoke about it, the management didn’t take the issue seriously because foam often comes off on launch, and never been a problem but they’d just got lucky before. Engineers were concerned but either ignored or risked losing their jobs if spoke out. The NASA guy said right after the crash, it can’t have been the foam as too light to cause the damage, then they ran a test and it went straight through 😬

Yeah unlikely they could have been sure of the damage even if spy satellites got involved. Should have stayed grounded until they fixed the issue with foam coming away which happened often.

Posted By: SCC 28, Mar 1, 14:54:30