Dr. Mark (former deputy administrator of NASA) held another lecture about the Columbia accident today. This one briefly discussed the impact of the foam insulation against the leading edge of the wing, and the resulting plasma flow during re-entry. A lot of the talk was also about the Challenger, and seemed to be Dr. Mark blowing his own horn, but I guess he's entitled to it. He talked about the "NASA culture" and ragged on how technically unqualified people were being appointed to positions of high leadership, where they were being asked to make decisions they weren't informed about. He also talked about how you can't run an organization like NASA under the close supervision of some kind of safety office, cuz something always goes wrong, and in the end, it's a judgement call as to whether a given set of risks is worth taking.

Another interesting tidbit mentioned in the lecture was regarding the International Space Station. The ISS was originally conceived as a staging base for trips to the moon or to mars, cuz after you've achieved orbital velocity, you're already more than half way to escape velocity. However, the nature of the ISS changed when we (the U.S) decided to include the Russians. This was largely a political decision; to encourage political ties, but also to keep the former Soviet rocket scientists busy so they wouldn't turn their attention to nukes. However, when they decided to include the Russians, they had to put the station into a high inclination orbit (closer to around the poles than just the equator) that renders it pretty useless for interplanetary travel. A plus though, is that we get to use their launch sites to re-supply the ISS also. It's a tradeoff either way, but the ISS no longer serves its original purpose.