MarsBlog.net

Gruesome news on the human remains.

This just doesn’t look right to me. I don’t see how this could be the result of the Orbiter breaking up — this looks like it was eroded away well before Columbia fell apart.

I keep seeing these different video clips of the breakup, and to me it looks increasingly like Columbia lost a wing or the vertical stabilizer. Something broad and flat appears to flip away just after the breakup begins.

Interestingly, the Arlington home-video clip shows the trail turning a deep brownish-red or purplish-red just before anything appears wrong with the Orbiter itself (well, unless the trail itself was a problem, but it looked normal as I recall up to that point). They hypergolics are described as brownish gases, so perhaps there was a leak from one of the tanks or a stuck-open thruster. I’ve no clue what color burning aluminum gives off, but an analysis of the trail colors in these videos could give hints of what was burning when. Unfortunately, I doubt the tapes are of such quality as to give more than a broad hint based on color.

Whenever confronted with NASA’s preoccupation with safety, I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes:

Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare,
But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
— Saadi of Shiraz

I dearly hope that NASA doesn’t overreact to this accident with even more stringent safety procedures that end up limiting human exploits in space.

We do NOT need to stop flying. We do NOT need to spend billions of dollars more on making Shuttle “safe”.

We need to replace the Shuttle system with something inherently safer, it is true. But we will never make space flight “safe”. This needs to be the message coming from NASA now: spaceflight has inherent dangers, and sometimes these dangers cannot be averted or even predicted, even with the best of efforts on the part of thousands of dedicated people.

It is said that astronauts today are in more danger driving to the Cape for their launch than actually flying in space. They are themselves well aware of the dangers involved, and choose to fly anyway because of the rewards of doing so. These benefits redound to the benefit of all of us, and what should be happening after today is less making Shuttle even safer for those who ride it than making space access more available to everyone, through less expensive (and by design, more reliable) new spacecraft and launch systems.

Where are the images of the debris field? We’re only seeing the same old footage of the breakup.

I don’t have cable here. Man…I actually miss having CNN.