If you have any interest at all in the Columbia tragedy, you must read this article written by Gregg Eaterbrook in April 1980, 23 years before Columbia blew up on re-entry. It details the problems the shuttle program was having even back then, when Columbia was being built.
I was too young then to know much about this. But it seems that the space shuttle has a long list of well documented problems that plagued it even before its maiden voyage. For example, if indeed failure of the the re-entry tiles caused Columbia to disintegrate, such a scenario was predicted even back then.
Excerpt:
"But you're in luck--the launch goes fine. Once you get into space, you check to see if any tiles are damaged. If enough are, you have a choice between Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is hope they can get a rescue shuttle up in time. Plan B is burn up coming back. "
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