Well Rand, I do, I care. I find it interesting reading, to hear about how
people found out about the Disaster. Even the ones who weren't
connected to NASA and just happened to be watching the landing, maybe even
yours. Jim Oberg's story, which he hasn't told yet, as far as I know,
would be interesting to me and maybe some others who read this news group.
He had a posting here before the Disaster that was intriguing to me.
Enough time has passed so that telling the story might not be too
painful. This posting is going to sci.space.shuttle and sci.space.history,
and Jim actually did hear hints of what was going on at NASA at the time.
Historians might find his story interesting at some point in the future
too. How I found out about Columbia really isn't that interesting.

How I found out about the Challenger Disaster might be considered a bit
more interesting to the group. I found out about that Disaster when I
heard a gasp coming from the other side of the room. From over in the
corner where the ARD people were. I couldn't see the video monitor in the
room, so I had to lean around the console, all those stagnant numbers,
to see the television. I can still see the image of the lone SRB flying by
itself. The flash of hope, followed by the realization, nudging my
coworker, stop looking at the stagnant data, look up at the only real data
in the room, the live video feed.

That story might be interesting to others, as Jim's story about Columbia
might be interesting. Maybe not news worthy, but a personal interest type
story, his thoughts and feelings. I was kind of hoping he would share.

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @
--

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:33:57+0000, Rand Simberg wrote:

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 12:45:26 GMT, in a place far, far away, Craig Fink
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

I totally disagree with you.

Who cares?

I can imagine you have a lot of personal investment in your point of view,
as you actually knew about the impact to the wing a long time (many days)
before the Disaster. And, choose to believe what you were being told by
your sources that everything was fine. I can totally understand your
baggage leading to your conclusions. You were hoodwinked like many of the
NASA engineers, that NASA management wouldn't stick their heads in the
ground. Me, I first heard about the Disaster in WalMart, when I overheard
someone talking about the destruction of Columbia.

Again, who cares? How is where you heard about it relevant to the
discussion?

But, any repair, wet towels or tortillas would have been much better than
leaving a gapping hole in the leading edge of the wing. Entry heating is a
time function, just like thawing your Thanksgiving Turkey. It takes days
to thaw a Turkey in the fridge. A day outside the fridge on your counter.
And with a blow torch, probably well over an hour. Plenty of time to make
it to the runway.

You don't know what you're talking about. Show us the calculations.

What calculations? It's an experiment, and not a very realistic one, they
didn't have a Turkey with them. There is a really, really big difference
between have the bow shock in front of the wing and having it inside the
wing. I'm sorry you can't see that.