content: And this was essentially a repeat of the Challenger tragedy.  Engineers who know what the vehicle can and cannot do (fire the Solid Rocket Boosters in temperatures below 51 degrees -- in the case of Challenger, attempt atmospheric re-entry and landing with a potential impact-hole in the Reinforced Carbon-Carbon shield of the wing's leading edge -- in the case of Columbia) were over-ruled by bureaucrats and "managers". Later the "managers" of STS-107 (Columbia) would decide that, instead of taking a bold and all-out approach to save the crew {read: The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia } that it would be better to plug their ears and hope for the best.  With an attitude like that, we certainly would have lost the crew of Apollo 13 in 1970. Luckily for Apollo 13, we had the likes of flight directors Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney, and others who embodied the spirit "Not on my watch" [will any astronaut lives be lost]. The truth is, another Shuttle (Atlantis) could have been ready in roughly 3 weeks and Columbia could have survived 30 days in space. There were no shortage of veteran shuttle astronauts who've stated they were willing to risk their life to attempt a rescue. The takeaway is that we have no longer have engineering-background managers at the top of the chain-of-command like NASA had in the Apollo era, or lacking that, management that is willing to take the decision of the engineers and run that plan.  And something that has not changed, except in the face of public tragedy, is NASA's budget-keepers being penny-wise/pound-foolish.  It's what caused the Apollo 1 tragedy. The original proposed design for the Apollo command module was an outward-opening door that could be opened in seconds to allow the crew to escape. An outward-opening door was heavier, more complicated and of course more costly in terms of engineering effort.  In light of that, the outward-opening door was MUCH safer than an inward-opening door. Sadly the government penny-pinchers forced the inward-opening door (which also lead to running a pure O2 environment) for cost reasons. Everyone knows the rest of the story: a fire broke out in the pure O2 environment, and the three Apollo 1 astronauts burned to death on the launch pad during a test scenario. Subsequently, the authorization was given to go back to completing the outward-opening door design and have that on the "Block-II" Apollo command module. In the 80's prior to the Challenger tragedy, NASA also knew about blow-by in the O-ring seals of the solids. But budget-managers did not want to authorize money for enhancing the SRB joint-sealing mechanism (adding an additional sealing ring). After Challenger, it was authorized. The long story is, going to space is always "Rocket Science" and space flight is absolutely unforgiving of error. it's best to have the engineers who design, calculate and test the abilities of the craft to have the final say when lives are on the line.