Discovery dodged a Columbia-style disaster in 2005

[Hotdog]

Interesting blog article I stumbled upon:
http://waynehale.wordpress.com/2012/04/ ... discovery/

[Benji]

That whole blog is awesome, thanks for sharing!

[Steve]

Awesome story Hotdog, one for the history books!! Thanks for sharing

[p51]

STS-27 came ridiculously close to the same fate STS-107 had, many years before. I massive foam strike ripped up the entire underside of the orbiter, and even penetrated to the metal underside in one spot (thankfully, there was a heavy antenna base right under that tile).
It was DoD mission and while NASA knew there'd been a foam strike, nobody took it seriously, nobody would alow the imagining needed to see how bad the damage was due to the secret nature of the mission. Video from the Canada arm showed all this, but NASA blew the crew off, not realizing what the poor quality video was actually showing.
When they landed, there was a lot of, "I told you so," from the crew.
I've spoken with crew members Jerry Ross and Mike Mullane about this, neither were aware how bad it really was. Mission Commander 'Hoot' Gibson has since been quoted he was sure they were going to die on re-entry and already had some choice words for NASA ready, once he started seeing the indications he'd have expected before the breakup of the orbiter. He was going to tell them off (probably in colorful language, I'd bet) in the 60-90 seconds he reasoned he'd have before his death...

[Hotdog]

Hoot was telling us the STS-27 story in Otters one night, back during the SC 25th anniversary. Had Atlantis been lost on that mission, I doubt the shuttle program would have been continued after that, with Challenger still fresh on people's minds. Scary to think about. So many close calls in spaceflight, and I'm sure there are many we don't know about.

[p51]

So many close calls in spaceflight, and I'm sure there are many we don't know about.

You have no idea how right you probably are.
I worked with KSC on an anti-terrorist exercise on active duty several years ago. The stuff some of the people there told me really made my blood run cold.