I must ask yet again: "What are your qualifications?"

Just one little point I loved:

"4) On board emergency CO2 scrubbers, candles, or other systems need to be enhanced to increase shuttle life time on orbit to the ammount of time necessary for a rescue shuttle to be dispatched in case of failure. "

Anyone here with a gradeschool knowledge of physics want to explain to Mr Grondine what a candle does in weightlessness? Anyone? Aside from the stupidity of having an open flame in the shuttle does anyone care to help Grondine with a little grade school science?

"3) A safe bail out indicator needs to be installed in the crew compartment hatch. In this context, perhaps the costs and benefits of reduced crew size and ejection seat installation should be examined once again, and/or the use of stowable side-ways ejection seats for the mid-deck."

Do you think bailout at mach 18 is an option? I can see the procedure... "In case of hypersonic bailout carefully glue the heat resistant tiles to your body- allow time for the epoxy to cure... Then open the hatch, and bail out..."

The only way to have saved the Columbia 7 via a bail out is if the crew comprtment was a fully heat shielded landing craft on its own... This would take space and mass and complexity that would render the shuttle unusable... even IF it were possible to retrofit something like that into a shuttle!

You cannot grasp grade school science, and yet you heap abuse and cursewords on people who actually know what they talk about because they wont take you seriously?

What are your qualifications? Are you a high school drop-out? (Not that there is anything wrong with that- I am a highschool drop out myself, I don't have a GED), you dont seem to have a basic grasp on physics... Yet we are supposed to treat you like a world expert?