10. Did the CAIB do a good job and should we trust their work?
The short answer is yes.
A little longer answer is they did a great job, covered all their bases, had the right people looking at the right things and approached the whole thing from an appropriately objective point of view.
Watching all of the public hearings and participating or listening in on almost all of the press conferences, we could see how the board members were catching on to the issues and grew in their understanding of the technical and management challenges the space agency faces every day.
There were no prima donnas on this panel. When they said they were split up into working groups, they weren't kidding.
And throughout all of the proceedings, board chairman Hal Gehman kept things moving with efficiency and good humor.
There was never any doubt about the board's independence of NASA, even if it made reporting on their activities a little more difficult from time to time by not taking full advantage of NASA TV resources at the major centers.
But with callouts to the media, phone bridges to participate remotely and a willingness to hold regular news briefings, no can say fairly that the board did all of its business in secret.
Sure, they conducted more than 200 privileged interviews that may never see the light of day -- a fact that bruised the egos of several lawmakers. But allowing space workers to tell their story anonymously works best in the space program. It may not be the most credible way to report a news story, but sometimes it's the only way to get the real story.
Although we haven't seen the final report yet, from what we can tell so far we believe the CAIB will produce a report that will offer the real story of what happened, explain why, and offer a framework for debating the direction NASA's space program should take in the future.
Then it will be up to all of us to ensure Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Mike Anderson, David Brown and Ilan Ramon did not die in vain.
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