[KingNo155]

at 12,00+ mph what can slow u down? LOL parachutes? if the whole thing burned up what is a sail/ parachute going to do for you. I drove a car over 200mph w chutes deployed and didn't think i would stop in time before the wall came over the horizon, luckly i did! all this hindsight talk is unproductive, dear old buzz is blowin smoke up our ass trying to be self important and pretending he has some answer when hes just as puzzled as the rest of us.

[ARCADIA]

If it worked for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, it can work for a shuttle escape capsule. IIRC they used a series of timed parachutes starting with some very small ones to decelerate the thing.

[Vortex]

Since there was radar imagery of the debris after Columbia broke up, I wondered if debris prior to that would show up on radar, also. The below link is to an archive site for radar images. This particular one is for Amarillo. It appears that possibly there was radar indicated debris at 7:50am CST Southeast of Amarillo.

http://www.rap.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/neilley/NIDS_archive?Radar=AMA&Composite=NONE&Start_date=20030201&Start_time=13&Duration=120&Frequency=0&Parameter=1

It certainly does look like the event on and after 8:00am CST was picked up.

Thoughts?

Note: this site will automatically remove images, so this link may not work after a day or so.