You have an emergency email - Email has become an area of examination as investigators look for causes in the crash of the Columbia.
The basic questions of responsibility that follow the break up of the shuttle are slight variations on the most common that are found in critical investigations in the years since Watergate: What did the administrators know, and when they know it.
Add to that: Did they receive emails that discussed possible peril? If not: Why didn’t they receive the emails that discussed peril?
A fairly heated discussion took place on the subject of debris that hit the shuttle wing during take off, much of it took place over the modern electronic mail medium, but it did not apparently escalate to the point that it was formally discussed by those most responsible for the flight.
The email trail is a worthwhile path of inquiry. But it also opens up other pathways of import.
The very idea of using email for sorting out life and death matters should be questioned here. This is a relatively new communication device, and we are all learning as we go. Email is useful, but has its weaknesses. It is new to us; it isn’t ready for matters of life and death, or we aren’t ready to use it in such matters.
If you go back to the Challenger days, you find that teleconferences were held that failed to avert the failed flight. Of course, here we had a flight already in orbit, with a whole different set of issues. The act of the teleconference was not at question, maybe the act of email should not be at issue here. Yet..
Does email convey a worried personality as does a phone call? Does it convey intentions of its users as does a nice thick memo with ‘for your eyes only’ writ on it? Does one email look much differently than another? Is there an obvious pressure to respond to it? Can you see it for all the Viagra and low-rate mortgage ads?
Vortex of superheated air roiled over wing - Mar. 8, 2003, Washington Post
NASA Emails Show Hot Debate Over Shuttle -Feb. 26, 2003, Discovery Channel
Are we all irresponsible? –Digital Design, Aug. 1986
9:43:25 PM 
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