Although the investigation board's final report isn't due for another two months or so, attention on when the shuttle fleet will resume flying has been getting an increasing amount of attention of late.

While at least one U.S. Representative from Texas has called for a halt to shuttle operations -- as has legendary aerospace engineer Max Faget, who helped design every NASA spacecraft from Mercury to the shuttle -- other lawmakers are more confident the aging spaceplanes haven't seen their final days.

"When the report is completed there are those of us who believe that it's very important we get back into the business of manned space exploration," said U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla.

Feeney, whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center and who stood with Gehman in answering questions, added, "A lot of us have confidence that the shuttle is going to be the short-term vehicle to go service the International Space Station."

Gehman and at least five other board members were on Florida's Space Coast this weekend to be briefed on the latest findings in the ongoing analysis of shuttle debris now that KSC has received its last truckload from Texas.

"Many of us felt it was our duty to come down and see it for ourselves," Gehman said.

Critical areas of Columbia's left wing, particularly its forward leading edge, is being re-built with the help of a three-dimensional model and framework so investigators can better picture what the debris is telling them.

The board believes that a breach in the forward edge allowed hot gases to enter the left wing, which led to melting and the loss of structural integrity, and the debris analysis seems to be backing up that theory.

"We saw the things today which we believe are compelling pieces of evidence that tell us how the heat got into the vehicle and where the flaw started," Gehman said, praising the "clever people" at KSC who have done much of the analysis.

"In retrospect of where we stand today, the work that was done here turned out to be more significant than we thought it would have been at the beginning," Gehman said. "For that we owe a lot of thanks to a lot of people down here at KSC."

More than 84,000 pieces of Columbia have been recovered and transported to the space center from Texas and Louisiana. The total weight -- nearly 85,000 pounds -- represents 38 percent of the shuttle. NASA had expected to collect no more than 20 percent, said launch director Mike Leinbach, who's heading the space agency's reconstruction team.

"This has shocked a lot of people we got this much back," Leinbach said, adding that the variety of damage is also amazing.

"You can see the nose landing gear and the tires are not in too bad of shape. And then those boxes on the back wall, each one of those boxes could have a thousand pieces no bigger than a piece of paper," Leinbach said. "It's very difficult to put in words how you feel when you look at the variety of the damage that Columbia sustained, and how well she put up a fight."

Almost all the wreckage will be available to researchers interested in re-entering hypersonic spacecraft. Most of the crew cabin will be off-limits, however, because of the high emotions and sensitivity surrounding those pieces, Leinbach said. All seven astronauts were strapped into their seats in the cabin, when the shuttle broke apart over Texas on Feb. 1.

Sixteen more minutes, and Columbia would have landed on the Kennedy Space Center runway, just a few minutes' walk from the hangar that now holds the ship's remains.