Hello -

This is jsut my guesses as to what's going to be coming down the pike.

The March 7 internal report and in particular report of Rocha et al.'s concerns, and techniques for dealing with a TPS damaged shuttle, were just released at the end of last week.

The PAO people at NASA, like nearly all NASA employees, are some of the finest in the business. It is quite common for them to bury bad news in good news, or to release it on days when other events predominate.

This is acceptable, except in the case of shuttle loss. Then, when relevant information is released both to the public as well as their elected representatvies nearly 1 month after it is available, you end up with full congressional scrutiny, including those "formalities" of "swearing in", and "subpeona" of records such as e-mail exchanges.

Sorry, guys, but there's no spin on that.

Maybe I can sort of understand Readdy's position. Saddam's out playing monte in the desert with chemical shells, and you can't really move a satellite, and Boeing tells you it was just some foam and nothing's wrong, but you don't understand exactly how limited that analysis is.

Ouch - You end up adding the loss of a $3.5 billion spacecraft and 7 crew, and the immobilization of another say $10.5 billion in assets, to the $80 billion or so cost of taking out Saddam and his thug sons.

But is this scenario what really happened? What about use of the Maui Observatory, which could have been used to recover more images of Columbia with no effect on keeping an eye on Saddam?

Ms. Ham's actions here also do not seem to add up, and it's clear that she is going to have to be formally deposed, as well as Readdy on his contacts with her, and the interaction between them.

Is this just a case where Ham felt that the requests for imagery were going around her, infringing on her authority and control? Or perhaps Ham was insisting that procedure needed to be established, where no procedure had existed before - a really bad call when dealing with a possibly damaged manned spacecraft. I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

Another thing here is dealing with the "sensitivity" of the imagery assets and personnel involved. Maybe there might have to closed meetings, with releases of only edited transcripts and videos of the testimony, or maybe some other techniques will be used. One thing for sure is that this is going to add difficulties to the investigation.

with prayers for the lives and well being of our troops in Iraq -

ep