“The bottom line is there is large uncertainty because nobody has a very good handle on the aerodynamics at those altitudes and at those speeds. Given that large degree of uncertainty, life could be normal during entry or some bad things could happen.”
“The worst case that [the engineers] think would happen is a piece that is 0.05 pounds is the maximum-size piece that could come off. If you make a series of worst-case assumptions, then you wouldn't like the result.”
“We have cleared Discovery to re-enter and we have decided not to take any action on the thermal blanket because we think that it represents negligible concern at this time.”
“We had a long conversation [in April] about what to do, so we changed out every cable connector, all the wiring and every electronic box. We felt we had a good system.”
“Thousands of man hours [were spent] in developing new techniques so that foam in part and other components of the flight vehicle do not come loose during supersonic flight in the atmosphere as the orbiter climbs to orbit.”
