[ShadowDancer]

Jesus. Go to bed already.

[Asclepius]

I think someone needs a nap.

[eabinga]

I doubt it. Reentry seemed to be normal, and NASA reported sensors going out on the left wing 7 minutes before it broke up.

[Fiddlstix]

Forget the "Nay sayers"
(No Names Mentoined)
It Is a Valid Question!

[eclectic]

It was the UFO that Saddam has. Made of tinfoil

[Alberta's Child]

One of the things that bothered me a little was when the media reports began stressing that "terrorism is not suspected -- the spacecraft was flying far beyond the range of any known missile -- no nation in the world has the means to do this from space -- etc."

If terrorism were a consideration, those would have been the last things I would have suspected. My first suspicion would relate to sabotage of some sort.

[isthisnickcool]

There is no remote access to the on-board computers from what I understand. The code on the machines cannot be modified except in specific ways that require hardware and hands-on access to the systems themselves. The code is very tightly controlled with numerous fail-safe techniques. Any modification to the code to instruct for something so radical to occur during re-entry would likely not have been allowed to be added to the code and found almost immediately. So, for example, a command to move control surfaces in a way that would be dangerous would likely setoff red flags.

Hopefully, that the way things worked.

Looks to me like there was some kind of failure that breached the tiles under the left wing. And once the wing was breached the heat cut the metal like a hot knife thru butter. As soon as the vehicle pitched at the loss of the wing that was it. At that speed and given the physical forces involved catastrophic failure occurred instantly.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

IF it was sabotage by computer... why wait until re-entry? All seemed to be normal, until the last few minutes of flight. Wouldn't it be much more stunning to have it happen in space? Then, we could start the conspiracy ball rolling about the little men from Mars!

[You Dirty Rats]

A terrorist hacker?

Is that Former Prime Minister Jim Hacker, or someone from the "All your shuttles are belong to us" crowd?

I sure hope it wasn't a terrorist hacker. If Osama Bin Hacking can bring down the shuttle from 200,000 feet with a computer, then he can launch our own missiles with the damn thing and start WWIII.

Somehow I don't think I'll lose too much sleeping worrying about it.

[ShadowDancer]

You didn't deserve what I said to you and I really am sorry for saying that. I was tense and I took it out on you and I shouldn't have.