"Pat Flannery" wrote:
Charleston wrote:

Kind of like this unreleased STS 51-L video where the smoke, uh stops at
3.375 seconds?

http://www.challengerdisaster.info/s..._m-2_mpg_i.mpg


You know, there's a far better video of the smoke plume out there than
that; in fact, I can't even see the smoke plume in that crappy and
distorted video. The other video is in color in color and a _lot_ closer
up.

There is definitely better film of the smoke puffs that occured immediately
at launch, that is true (film cameras E-60, E-63). Subsequently that film
was transferred to video. The best motion picture film photography of the
smoke puffs at launch, that is the cameras positioned with a direct angle to
observe the start-up tranisent as to location, direction of smoke, size,
etcetera, all failed to operate! The odds of that failure being coincidence
are dim, but it did happen that way.

As for your inability to see the smoke, please don't blame me. It takes a
lot of bandwidth to put up MPEG II or AVI. I will put up some higher
resolution photography later tonight for a limited timeframe. Personally, I
can see plenty of black smoke up to about 3.4 seconds, and subsequently I
see significant diffuse smoke brightly illuminated by the light of the SRB
flames. Also, I conclude that the "STS 51-L JSC Visual Data Analysis
Sub-Team" and the team at LMSC got it right when they saw smoke and "solid
material" as late as 45 seconds emanating from the same region of the
vehicle. Unfortuantely, they were overruled by the film team at KSC. As
you probably know, it is KSC's views that are reflected in the final
Presidential Commission report.

Daniel