clipped the following from the LA TImes.

"In the immediate aftermath of the accident, shuttle director Ron Dittemore said
that even if NASA had known the shuttle was crippled, there was nothing it could
do about it."

Looschanj wrote:
Not exactly, and we've been through this before. It would be more accurate to
say he said "we can't do that" to most common uninformed second guesses. Like
tile repair, etc.

Seems that the LA Times has overstated the contents of Dittemore's
remarks and added an element of interpretation. Playing around with
semantics. I think Dittemore would agree with the logic of the
premise as the LA Times has presented it, that a tile repair was the
only thing that could have saved it, we couldn't repair the tile,
there was nothing that could have been done. That being said, I would
prefer that the LA Times not add their editorial view to what we have
here, a paraphrase that is being passed off as a "quote".