On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 12:45:26 GMT, in a place far, far away, Craig Fink
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

I totally disagree with you.

Who cares?

I can imagine you have a lot of personal investment in your point of view,
as you actually knew about the impact to the wing a long time (many days)
before the Disaster. And, choose to believe what you were being told by
your sources that everything was fine. I can totally understand your
baggage leading to your conclusions. You were hoodwinked like many of the
NASA engineers, that NASA management wouldn't stick their heads in the
ground. Me, I first heard about the Disaster in WalMart, when I overheard
someone talking about the destruction of Columbia.

Again, who cares? How is where you heard about it relevant to the
discussion?

But, any repair, wet towels or tortillas would have been much better than
leaving a gapping hole in the leading edge of the wing. Entry heating is a
time function, just like thawing your Thanksgiving Turkey. It takes days
to thaw a Turkey in the fridge. A day outside the fridge on your counter.
And with a blow torch, probably well over an hour. Plenty of time to make
it to the runway.

You don't know what you're talking about. Show us the calculations.