[OutSpot]

I BELIEVE IT WAS A TERRORIST ATTACK.

In my opinion a missle!!

Please see the vapor trail coming from the south. This was not the track that the shuttle was taking.(West to East) This is as clear as it gets. My heart dropped when I saw this image!!

What are your thoughts?.

[txradioguy]

Not unless there is some new "Super" AAMRAM or something like it that's capable of hitting something going Mach 17.


Good try.

[Texas_Jarhead]

no missile

[Iwentsouth]

You are wrong.

Too high. Too fast.

[AppyPappy]

In my opinion a missle!!

Not a chance. Nothing can reach that altitude.

[joanil]

I think that may be a 'line sweep' of the radar.

[Robert A Cook PE]

No missile is credible.

200,000 feet up and 6,000 mph requires ABM technology. (And even our recent tests are only now getting close enough to go to phase 2 and consider deployment.

Internal sabatoge? (sp)

Certainly possible. Blow the tail or loosen a few tiles. Not likely, given the inspections going on on: those are white glove and fully smocked areas, almost impossible to get to without an inspector tagging along, or being caught by a later technician checking something else. (Nobody is going to "ignore" an "extra black box" stuffed haphazardly into the tail section or engine area.)

[alancarp]

Regarding that "vapor trail" from the south: simply a radar artifcat.

Look at the facts: there is nothing on earth that can fly that high (200,000+ ft - 38 miles) other than a space vehicle. There is nothing on earth that can fly that fast (12,000+ MPH) other than a space vehicle. No missiles. No aircraft. Let's remove the tinfoil hats and THINK, folks.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Also:

Look again at the "V" made by this return going AWAY from the radar itself. A missile flight would show the exact opposite (the "V" going forward with the flight, ending with a faint image at the missile itself - even assuming this kind of weather radar could pick up a single missile anyway.

Now, imagine a large object mometarily in the radar path relatively close to the radar. (Any interference will do, it could even be a debris finally falling low enough to get picked up.) The radar "shadow" WOULD point away from the radar itself, and would expand geometrically exactly as you see.

Nope, this is a single spurious radar reflection, NOT a missile.

By the time the single radar image was seen, you can see the main debris/ion field TO THE EAST-SOUTHEAST of Dallas. the shuttle has already broken by this time.

[Timesink]

BELIEVE IT WAS A TERRORIST ATTACK. In my opinion a missle!! ... What are your thoughts?.

Impossible. There is no technology in existence that can hit an object at such an altitude and speed. The only terrorist scenario even barely possible, much less plausible, would be if someone somehow rigged something on Columbia before launch. And that possiblity would go against Occam's Razor.