The Best Part #3 of CAIB Report

Calvin Schomburg breezily summarizes the situation in an email on the
21st as "TPS took a hit - shouldn't be a problem." 1 day later, in
another email, he concedes that if the foam piece is big enough in
size, a foam hit could cause burn thru and loss of vehicle and crew.

(see Chap.6, pg. 149 of the CAIB final Report for the 1st email:
"About an hour later, Calvin Schomburg, a Johnson Space Center
engineer with close connections to Shuttle management, sent the
following e-mail to other Johnson engineering managers.
Shuttle Program managers regarded Schomburg as an expert on the
Thermal Protection System. His message downplays the possibility that
foam damaged the Thermal Protection System. However, the Board notes
that Schomburg was not an expert on Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC),
which initial debris analysis indicated the foam may have struck.
Because neither Schomburg nor Shuttle management rigorously
differentiated between tiles and RCC panels, the bounds of Schomburg's
expertise were never properly qualified or questioned.

-----Original Message-----
From: SCHOMBURG, CALVIN (JSC-EA) (NASA)
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 9:26 AM
To: SHACK, PAUL E. (JSC-EA42) (NASA); SERIALE-GRUSH, JOYCE M. (JSC-EA)
(NASA); HAMILTON, DAVID A. (DAVE) (JSC-EA) (NASA)
Subject: FW: STS-107 Post-Launch Film Review - Day 1
FYI-TPS took a hit-should not be a problem-status by end of week.")

(see Chap.6, pg. 155 of the CAIB final Report for the 2nd email:
-----Original Message-----
From: SCHOMBURG, CALVIN (JSC-EA) (NASA)
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 10:53 AM
To: ROE, RALPH R. (JSC-MV) (NASA)
Subject: ET Foam Loss
No-the amount of damage ET foam can cause to the TPS material-tiles is
based on the amount of impact energy-the size of the piece and its
velocity( from just after pad clear until about 120 seconds-after that
it will not hit or it will not enough energy to cause any damage)-it
is a pure kinetic problem-there is a size that can cause enough damage
to a tile that enough of the material is lost that we could burn a
hole through the skin and have a bad day-(loss of vehicle and crew
-about 200-400 tile locations( out of the 23,000 on the lower
surface)-the foam usually fails in small popcorn pieces-that is why it
is vented-to make small hits-the two or three times we have been hit
with a piece as large as the one this flight-we got a gouge about 8-10
inches long about 2 inches wide and 3/4 to an 1 inch deep across two
or three tiles. That is what I expect this time-nothing worst. If that
is all we get we have have no problem-will have to replace a couple of
tiles but nothing else.")

Ellen