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Nasa has revealed that the Columbia crew, which included first Indian woman in space Kalpana Chawla, were not told the shuttle had been damaged during its launch and that they might not survive re-entry.

The revelation came as the seven astronauts who died were remembered at a public memorial service at Florida on the 10th anniversary of the disaster.

The shuttle was returning from a routine 16-day mission when it broke over Texas. According to the Daily Mirror, Wayne Hale, who later became space shuttle programme manager, has blogged about the day.
"After one of the MMTs (mission management teams) when possible damage to the orbiter was discussed, he (flight director Jon Harpold) gave me his opinion: 'You know, there is nothing we can do about damage to the TPS (thermal protection system)," he wrote.

"If it has been damaged it's probably better not to know. I think the crew would rather not know. Don't you think it would be better for them to have a happy successful flight and die unexpectedly during entry than to stay on orbit, knowing that there was nothing to be done, until the air ran out?'," he added.

According to the report, it took months for an investigation to discover the cause of the accident, a briefcase-sized piece of foam, which had broken off an external fuel tank and punched a hole in the wing.

Possible emergency procedures (from Wikipedia)

The CAIB determined that a rescue mission, though risky, might have been possible provided NASA management had taken action soon enough.[48][49] They stated that had NASA management acted in time, two possible contingency procedures were available: a rescue mission by shuttle Atlantis, and an emergency spacewalk to attempt repairs to the left wing thermal protection.

Normally a rescue mission is not possible, due to the time required to prepare a shuttle for launch, and the limited consumables (power, water, air) of an orbiting shuttle. However, Atlantis was well along in processing for a planned March 1 launch on STS-114, and Columbia carried an unusually large quantity of consumables due to an Extended Duration Orbiter package. The CAIB determined that this would have allowed Columbia to stay in orbit until flight day 30 (February 15). NASA investigators determined that Atlantis processing could have been expedited with no skipped safety checks for a February 10 launch. Hence if nothing went wrong there was a five-day overlap for a possible rescue. As mission control could deorbit an empty shuttle but could not control the orbiter's reentry and landing, it would likely have sent Columbia into the Pacific Ocean;[48] NASA later developed the Remote Control Orbiter system to permit mission control to land a shuttle. Docking at the International Space Station for use as a safe haven while awaiting rescue (or to use the Soyuz to systematically ferry the crew to safety) would have been impossible due to the different orbital inclination of both vehicles.

NASA investigators determined on-orbit repair by the shuttle astronauts was possible but risky, primarily due to the uncertain resiliency of the repair using available materials.[48][49] Columbia did not carry the Canadarm, or Remote Manipulator System, which would normally be used for camera inspection or transporting a spacewalking astronaut to the wing. Therefore an unusual emergency extra-vehicular activity (EVA) would have been required. While there was no astronaut EVA training for maneuvering to the wing, astronauts are always prepared for a similarly difficult emergency EVA to close the external tank umbilical doors located on the orbiter underside, which is necessary for reentry. Similar methods could have reached the shuttle left wing for inspection or repair.[48]

For the repair, the CAIB determined the astronauts would have to use tools and small pieces of titanium, or other metal, scavenged from the crew cabin. These metals would help protect the wing structure and would be held in place during re-entry by a water-filled bag that had turned into ice in the cold of space. The ice and metal would help restore wing leading edge geometry, preventing a turbulent airflow over the wing and therefore keeping heating and burn-through levels low enough for the crew to survive re-entry and bail out before landing. Since the NASA team could not verify that the repairs would survive even a modified re-entry, the rescue option had a considerably higher chance of bringing Columbia's crew back alive.

My question: From reading all of that, do you think NASA made the right choice in not telling the astronauts that they may not survive re-entry so they could die quick and probably happily after completing a mission, or should they have told them astronauts so that they could make peace with themselves and speak to loved ones before attempting to repair the shuttle, get rescued or die.

Personally NASA should have attempted to rescue them with Atlantis, it's ridiculous that they didn't and they should be brought up on murder charges for denying the astronauts a chance to live. I hope whoever made that decision can't sleep at night.

See that's something that I guess we'll have to disagree on. I would rather not have known that I was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it. If NASA had seen it as a possibility to rescue them, then they should have been told. But if nothing could have been done, I would rather have it occur spontaneously without my knowledge.