While it is very sad to see the space shuttle disintegration (the disaster...), it is perhaps worth wondering if it is a failure of current state of undestanding of simulations (CFD in particular ?) On the other hand, is it going to give a fillip to CFD (CFD industry) in terms of more focus and funding ? My simple mind can not figureout lah...

I was thinking it might be a failure of the simulation of an impact - a solid mechanics problem.

But we still don't know that the insulation hitting the wing caused the problem.

We will have to wait for the investigation. This is from a time.com article. -----------------excerpt------------------- Jeffrey Kluger: There are three possible scenarios that explain this event. The first, which I believe is the likeliest explanation, would be an aerodynamic structural breakup of the shuttle caused by it rolling at the wrong angle. Remember, after reentry, the shuttle is descending without power, which means astronauts at the controls can't compensate for a loss of attitude by using the engines, they can only do so using the flaps. And that's extremely hard. Astronauts describe piloting the shuttle on reentry as like trying to fly a brick with wings. It's very difficult to operate, and even more so to correct any problems. -----------------excerpt------------------- The Ariane 5 Flight 501 failure was purely due to a software glitch. http://java.sun.com/people/jag/Ariane5.html