While I’m a harsh critic of NASA in general, I’ve been withholding criticism of the agency with regard to what happened to Columbia until the facts are out. This is partly because, well, I don’t know all the facts yet, and I actually want to provide some useful advice, but also because much of the criticism that they’ve sustained since February 1 has been (to put it as charitably as possible) uninformed and largely logic free. And basing policy decisions on flawed analysis paves a road to policy disaster (as we’ve seen with the space program down the decades).

My largest complaint, of course, is that people continue to whine about the loss in human life, and put forth ridiculous concepts like flying the vehicle unmanned, when that’s not the issue at all (the real issue is the high cost and fragile nature of our fleet, given its pathetically small size and flight rate).

The astronauts are grownups and, as I’ve said repeatedly, they knew the job was dangerous when they took it. However, what if they didn’t know quite how dangerous it was?

I’m not referring to the natural desire to not want to find bad news that seemed to prevail during the flight. I’m talking about the general state of knowledge about the system, even prior to the launch of that flight. Which is why I find this story quite troubling.