Larry, It is beginning to look as if the door covering the wheel well was sprung, or even wide open. (I do not know if they have a door open sensor...they should have).
There were some comments that someone saw a square panel tumbling behind the Columbia as she was in re-entry. Shortly after this the temps were reported and she apparently yawed 90 degrees, thus breaking her up.
I have this e-mail that reports this:
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This sounds incredible, but,
Yesterday Fox News showed an amateur video clip which at one point, before
the obvious shuttle breakup, zoomed in and showed the shuttle sideways[!]
with the left side facing the relative "wind". Bottom of fuselage was facing
earth, and nose was too low and tail was too high. No contrail in the shot
quite yet. It was not pixelation.
I couldn't believe my eyes and watched the shot many times during the next
few hours.
Fox News had the scoop and didn't even know it.
Tonight Fox caught on and showed more detail of the amateur tape and
questioned the sideways aspect.
I researched pix of the shuttle on the net and confirmed what the view of
the rear end would look like in the shown attitude. Just like the amateur
pix! Amazingly clear. Amazing.
Within 6 seconds or so it began to break up. The photographer had zoomed
back out, too bad, he would have had the shot of the decade.
The gov already knows what happened and will have to discuss it soon if my
eyes or his camera aren't deceiving me.
Amazing shot of the shuttle in the wrong attitude for reentry and the beans
will be out soon. I can't understand why the pilot and mission control
didn't catch it instantly, if in fact this is correct. Software screwup?
Maybe there was a lag in getting it reoriented after retro-braking.
Incidently, there was a piece of something, probably not much larger than a
refrigerator door, tumbling about 10 to 40 shuttle lengths behind it, in the
zoomed-in shot. Highly reflective at times.
So it had probably already started to come apart. I thought it might have
been part of the tail or a piece of the new design heat shield blanket
retrofit.
I'd like to see a time correlation of the com traffic with the pix.
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Note that tumbling piece, 30-40 shuttle lengths behind it? Could have been that sprung door.
Now they could have found that and it might just need closure. Or it may need an emergency rescue mission, which can be mounted in 2 weeks. Could they hang on? Probably. They have electricity and water can be electrolyzed for oxygen. CO2 absorbers can be vented to space to renew them, so they could have hel out if they had looked and found a problem.
I am very pissed off at these so called experts who have now destroyed to shuttle over the objections of the engineers.
I would not have tolerated large lumps of foam falling.
I would have solved the problem.
Bill |
