i saw this on the news

[Reverend]

If they weren't stupid, then our government would not be trying to ban the choice of abortions, creating tax cuts for the wealthiest 5% of our nation, deciding to hit on it's punching bag when another nation we know has weapons of mass destruction needs our attention, further creating a defecit, spending money to make sure that our male troops can get perscriptions for Viagra when not distributing contraceptions to the females, adandoning our public school systems, pissing off the rest of the world...

Do I have to go on?

[D-Trix]

just so we're clear, this is the most factual understanding i have of the events:

during the early stages of the launch, a piece of foam broke off the large orange solid-fuel booster and struck the leading edge of the left wing. note that it was a piece of foam, not very massive or dense, and that it came off before the craft had even broke the sound barrier (i believe that's 600 mph, not very high for the shuttle - for comparison, even a pebble could penetrate the entire craft at it's top speeds). note also that NASA had 16 days while the Columbia was in orbit to examine the wing and determine if there was significant damage, and in all that time they found no indication of serious problems.

during the re-entry, the first sign of trouble was the loss of several temperature-measuring instruments in the left wing. they did not indicate any change in temperature; they just stopped transmitting data. several minutes later, a tire-pressure guage in the left landing gear went off-line similarly. several minutes after that, a structural temperature-guage in the left side of the craft began to show excessive heating. and even then it was several more minutes before NASA lost all transmissions fromt he shuttle.

what this sequence of events actually means is beyond me, but it appears to indicate at least that the connection between the foam and the problem is mere coincidence. if the heat shielding was really damaged from that, i would expect the temperature gauages to show an increase of some sort before going off-line, and they would only go off-line once the shuttle had started to break up. but as i said, i have no idea how the shuttle works and it's really not my place to be making speculation. i do think it's premature to blame NASA for negligence because of the foam.

~Ted

[BWS-1]

You know, I know lot of people might think that, some people thinking that it was terrorist related, weren't to bright. I understand why, but you know, I was WISHING for something even more stupid (for those that don't know what I'm talking about, just read my post on the first page). Untill a few hours ago, I was still thinking what we saw exploding in the sky was nothing but a missle intercepted, or any other crap like that ... but who wouldn't want "such crap like that" to be the truth? I couldn't beleive that 7 astronauts had just died there, and so I prayed for this hole tragedy to be a govermental prank to fool us and blind us from the truth, that would have been a missle attack.

[Reverend]

Would it only have been that...

[Shino]

[shadokastur]

Yes the talk shows are responsible for (at least some of) the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. But it's only fear and ignorance that seem to drive the human sense of mass justice. It's a shame but true.

[Reverend]

We like to think that we've got everything under control, that our technology cannot fail us, but we've only been sending people into space for a relatively short amount of time. Heck, cars have been around longer and they still have tons of accidents, so I guess it all evens out.

[Sperrit]

Here's something that I heard the other day about the whole shuttle thing:
"Why is it sadder to have seven Americans who knew that they were going into danger, and went willingly with pride, instead of loosing thousands of lives in an oppressed, underdeveloped country?"
Made me think.
That and the quote from yesterday's West Wing:
"Why is an American life worth more?"
"I don't know, sir, but it is."

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