It should not be happen, they would have sent the rescue mission to save them. NASA people were aware of what was going to happen for Columbia. Wayne Hale , the former project leader revealed the hidden secrets about the Columbia ship disaster. Hale wrote on his blog that he was told by Jon Harpold, then Nasa's director of mission operations: "You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the thermal protection system. If it has been damaged it's probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. "Don't you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?" At the time, Hale stressed, Harpold's words were purely hypothetical because the space agency's engineers were working on what he called "the wrong problem". They were looking at whether the briefcase-sized piece of foam, ...