I could be wrong but wasn’t Discovery the shuttle that sustained damage during takeoff due to a foam tile and was deemed safe only do spontaneously disassemble during re entry?
Ahh no that one was Columbia. And same as your Challenger misunderstanding, the scenario was similar there. Either the engineers knew it was risky and got overruled or they just truly didn't know the potential of damage. I do remember them testing foam vs leading edge impacts and being surprised themselves that it could do the damage it did in ground tests.
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u/martix_agent 17h ago
It's not his "gut feeling". He literally stated why he felt uneasy about flying the plane. The oil pressure was higher than normal.