Question: Whose assumption was that you could see the Great Wall from the space shuttle?
About the article "Great Wall of China", section "Visibility from low Earth orbit".

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A more controversial question is whether the Wall is visible from low Earth orbit (an altitude of as little as ).
NASA claims that it is barely visible, and only under nearly perfect conditions; it is no more conspicuous than many other man-made objects.
Other authors have argued that due to limitations of the optics of the eye and the spacing of photoreceptors on the retina, it is impossible to see the wall with the naked eye, even from low orbit, and would require visual acuity of 20/3 (7.7 times better than normal).
Astronaut William Pogue thought he had seen it from Skylab but discovered he was actually looking at the Grand Canal of China near Beijing.
He spotted the Great Wall with binoculars, but said that "it wasn't visible to the unaided eye."
U.S.
Senator Jake Garn claimed to be able to see the Great Wall with the naked eye from a space shuttle orbit in the early 1980s, but his claim has been disputed by several U.S. astronauts.
Veteran U.S. astronaut Gene Cernan has stated: "At Earth orbit of to high, the Great Wall of China is, indeed, visible to the naked eye."
Ed Lu, Expedition 7 Science Officer aboard the International Space Station, adds that, "it's less visible than a lot of other objects.
And you have to know where to look.
"In 2001, Neil Armstrong stated about the view from Apollo 11: "I do not believe that, at least with my eyes, there would be any man-made object that I could see.
I have not yet found somebody who has told me they've seen the Wall of China from Earth orbit.
...I've asked various people, particularly Shuttle guys, that have been many orbits around China in the daytime, and the ones I've talked to didn't see it.
"In October 2003, Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei stated that he had not been able to see the Great Wall of China.
In response, the European Space Agency (ESA) issued a press release reporting that from an orbit between , the Great Wall is visible to the naked eye.
In an attempt to further clarify things, the ESA published a picture of a part of the “Great Wall” photographed from Space.
However, in a press release a week later (no longer available in the ESA’s website), they acknowledged that the "Great Wall" in the picture was actually a river.
Leroy Chiao, a Chinese-American astronaut, took a photograph from the International Space Station that shows the wall.
It was so indistinct that the photographer was not certain he had actually captured it.
Based on the photograph, the "China Daily" later reported that the Great Wall can be seen from space with the naked eye, under favorable viewing conditions, if one knows exactly where to look.
However, the resolution of a camera can be much higher than the human visual system, and the optics much better, rendering photographic evidence irrelevant to the issue of whether it is visible to the naked eye.
After his retirement, Kraft served as a consultant for companies including Rockwell International and IBM, and as director-at-large of the Houston Chamber of Commerce.
In 1994, Kraft was appointed chairman of the space shuttle management independent review team, a panel made up of leading aerospace experts, whose remit was to investigate ways in which NASA could make its space shuttle program more cost effective.
The panel's report, known as the "Kraft report", was published in February 1995.
It recommended that NASA's space shuttle operations should be outsourced to a single private contractor, and that "NASA should consider ... progression towards the privatization of the space shuttle."
It also criticized the effect of safety changes made by NASA after the "Challenger" accident, saying that they had "created a safety environment that is duplicative and expensive."
Fundamental to the report was the idea that the shuttle had become "a mature and reliable system ... about as safe as today's technology will provide.
"The report was controversial even at the time of its publication.
John Pike, space policy director for the Federation of American Scientists, commented that "the "Kraft report" is a recipe for disaster.
They are basically saying dismantle the safety and quality assurance mechanisms set in place after the Challenger accident."
NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel also took issue with the report, saying in May 1995 that "the assumption that the Space Shuttle systems are now 'mature' smacks of a complacency which may lead to serious mishaps."
Nonetheless, NASA accepted the recommendations of the report, and in November 1995, responsibility for shuttle operations was turned over to the United Space Alliance.
Nine years later, the "Kraft report" was again criticized, this time by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) as part of its consideration of the organizational and cultural causes of the "Columbia" accident.
"The report," it said, "characterized the Space Shuttle program in a way that the Board judges to be at odds with the realities of the Shuttle Program."
According to the CAIB, the "Kraft report" had contributed to the undesirable safety culture within NASA, allowing NASA to view the shuttle as an operational—rather than experimental—vehicle, and distracting attention from continuing engineering anomalies. 
Visibility from space.
Visibility from the Moon.
One of the earliest known references to this myth appears in a letter written in 1754 by the English antiquary William Stukeley.
Stukeley wrote that, "This mighty wall of four score miles in length (Hadrian's Wall) is only exceeded by the Chinese Wall, which makes a considerable figure upon the terrestrial globe, and may be discerned at the Moon."
The claim was also mentioned by Henry Norman in 1895 where he states "besides its age it enjoys the reputation of being the only work of human hands on the globe visible from the Moon."
The issue of "canals" on Mars was prominent in the late 19th century and may have led to the belief that long, thin objects were visible from space.
The claim that the Great Wall is visible also appears in 1932's "Ripley's Believe It or Not!"
strip and in Richard Halliburton's 1938 book "Second Book of Marvels".
The claim the Great Wall is visible has been debunked many times,"Can you see the Great Wall of China from the moon or outer space?
", Answers.com.
Accessed May 12, 2010.
Cecil Adams, "Is the Great wall of China the only manmade object byou can see from space?
", "The Straight Dope".
Accessed May 12, 2010.
Snopes, "Great wall from space", last updated July 21, 2007.
Accessed May 12, 2010.
"Is China's Great Wall Visible from Space?
", "Scientific American", February 21, 2008.
"... the wall is only visible from low orbit under a specific set of weather and lighting conditions.
And many other structures that are less spectacular from an earthly vantage point—desert roads, for example—appear more prominent from an orbital perspective.
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The wall is a maximum wide, and is about the same color as the soil surrounding it.
Based on the optics of resolving power (distance versus the width of the iris: a few millimeters for the human eye, meters for large telescopes) only an object of reasonable contrast to its surroundings which is or more in diameter (1 arc-minute) would be visible to the unaided eye from the Moon, whose average distance from Earth is .
The apparent width of the Great Wall from the Moon is the same as that of a human hair viewed from away.
To see the wall from the Moon would require spatial resolution 17,000 times better than normal (20/20) vision.
Unsurprisingly, no lunar astronaut has ever claimed to have seen the Great Wall from the Moon. 
STS-89 was a space shuttle mission to the "Mir" space station flown by Space Shuttle " Endeavour", and launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida on 22 January 1998. 
NASA preferred Space Shuttle landings to be at Kennedy Space Center.
If weather conditions made landing there unfavorable, the Shuttle could delay its landing until conditions are favorable, touch down at Edwards Air Force Base, California, or use one of the multiple alternate landing sites around the world.
A landing at any site other than Kennedy Space Center meant that after touchdown the Shuttle must be mated to the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and returned to Cape Canaveral.
Space Shuttle "Columbia" (STS-3) once landed at the White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico; this was viewed as a last resort as NASA scientists believe that the sand could potentially damage the Shuttle's exterior.
There were many alternative landing sites that were never used.