oh crap...
2003-02-01 15:05![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blufiveIt looks like something very nasty happened to the space shuttle Columbia on its return from orbit.
BBC
Washington Post
Slashdot [Warning: crappy signal-to-noise ratio, including some tasteless "jokes", but I'm including it because the comments include some eye-witness stuff, and links to loads of other news sources]
Nasa lost contact at about 14:00 GMT, when Columbia was doing about 12,500mph at 200,000 feet near Dallas, Texas, on its way to a landing at Cape Canaveral. Eye witnesses report seeing a vapour trail, which split into several trails, and hearing a loud rumble or bang.
Obviously, the chances that any of the seven crew survived a high-speed vehicle disintegration 40 miles up are not good.
Given the presence of an Israeli astronaut on board, several people are speculating about terrorism. I think that's highly unlikely - there are no Surface-to-Air Missiles that I know of that could engage something that high and fast.
BBC
Washington Post
Slashdot [Warning: crappy signal-to-noise ratio, including some tasteless "jokes", but I'm including it because the comments include some eye-witness stuff, and links to loads of other news sources]
Nasa lost contact at about 14:00 GMT, when Columbia was doing about 12,500mph at 200,000 feet near Dallas, Texas, on its way to a landing at Cape Canaveral. Eye witnesses report seeing a vapour trail, which split into several trails, and hearing a loud rumble or bang.
Obviously, the chances that any of the seven crew survived a high-speed vehicle disintegration 40 miles up are not good.
Given the presence of an Israeli astronaut on board, several people are speculating about terrorism. I think that's highly unlikely - there are no Surface-to-Air Missiles that I know of that could engage something that high and fast.
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-01 07:41 (UTC)Sabotage strikes me as unlikely, too - from what I know, they check just about everything - the chances of anyone getting anything on board that shouldn't be there are as close to nil as makes no odds.
Apparently there was some kind of incident on take-off, where something came off the external tank and hit the port wing, but they reckoned everything was OK.
I agree, most likely it was some kind of technical failure - at that speed, if anything structural gives way (even something tiny), aerodynamics will finish it off in no time. :(