John Dvorak has a very interesting column on email and the recent shuttle disaster:

With the new e-mail world and Columbia, we immediately find out that the space crew was e-mailing friends from the vessel. Thus, Douglas Brown found out that his astronaut brother Dave Brown was concerned about Columbia's wing. Douglas discussed this concern with his US senator, George Allen. Wasn't it suspicious, then, in a NASA press release, Douglas said his brother never wrote about concerns with damage to the left wing?? We must conclude there was an obvious cover-up. Why would Douglas Brown discuss anything with his US Senator if there were nothing to discuss? This is all happening too fast for the agency. It's harder to buffalo the public in compressed time.


Also, because of e-mail, we found out that NASA made an informal request to have the Air Force shoot pictures of the underside of the Columbia with one of the spy satellites floating around. This request was pulled back for undisclosed reasons. Some surmise that the withdrawal came because the informal channel itself was a bad idea. This little episode needs an investigation, if you ask me. Again, e-mail was flying.