Here's a theory on contributing causes of the destruction of Columbia which
I hadn't heard before. This article was published about a week after the
loss:



http://www.pscu.com/articles/daily/8,6,1,0210,03.html



"The program assumed that the drag on the left wing was not the result of
damage but rather of atmospheric drag that would require a course correction
in order to maintain proper course."

The article postulates that the maneuver resulted from a lack of
sophistication in the flight software, and that the maneuver aggravated the
structural and thermal damage to the wing---the author refers to the "error"
as "fatal". Setting aside arguments about whether "lack of intelligence"
in the code == "bug" for another time, I don't recall that this idea came
up in the accident review. Was it dealt with somewhere else?

JJ Robinson II
Houston.TX