CONFIRMATION: Loyal readers will remember that back on February 3rd, I maintained that NASA's failure to have the orbiting Columbia visually inspected by any of a number of ground or space based lensing assets after being damaged by debris on takeoff would come back to haunt it. Quoth The New York Times:

Another board member, Maj. Gen. Kenneth W. Hess, said NASA management's decision not to ask other agencies to photograph the shuttle during the mission to see if the damage could be detected appeared to be based on a misunderstanding about who had actually wanted the images.

When management received the request, he said, "it was never made clear to them that the people who wanted the outside imagery were the damage assessment team," and not just kibbitzers. "At the end of the day everybody went back and did the best that they could with the information they had."

Kibbitzers?