On Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:55:36 -0600, Brian Thorn
wrote:

The idea didn't appear out of the blue after Columbia, especially
since Columbia's age played no role in the accident, but the CAIB put
all its weight behind the idea.

The age of the leading edge material, and the number of reentries it
had made, was a factor in the accident, I thought. It had become
brittle in extended use and was, therefore, not resistant to the
impact of the foam.

Mary "Or was this just a hypothesis?"
--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote reports about it.
or
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