Air Force imagery confirms Columbia wing damaged

Spaceflightnow.com ^ | 02/07/03 | CRAIG COVAULT

[tcostell]

Has NASA even commented on the possibilty of pre-launch sabotage? I've heard nothing about it in the media (suprise suprise) but I can't believe it isn't being considered.

[Pyrion]

I take it there's little to no chance that we'll ever actually SEE this photograph...

[leadpenny]

This is hugh.

[firewalk]

bttt

[leadpenny]

huge

[Lion's Cub]

fyi

[Physicist]

Hi, Hugh!

[leadpenny]

Doh!

[Truth29]

ping

[trebb]

NASA's been trying to discredit the foam damage theory, but it looks more and more like that was the root cause. I heard a report the other day that said the foam never broke off until they made the manufacturer "take freon out of the recipe" to make it more environmentally friendly. Chalk another one up to being too overzealously environmentally whacko...

[dasboot]

A series serious of hugh blungers.

[leadpenny]

All your series hugh blunders belong to us.

[Chad Fairbanks]

This is vey hugh...

[Publius6961]

These include the Soyuz 1 reentry accident that killed cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov in 1967 and the 1971 Soyuz 11 reentry accident that killed three cosmonauts returning after the first long-duration stay on the Salyut 1 space station.

Careful!
This is going to upset that bowling ball who posted the crack that we should be using russian proletariat superior technology because they never had accidents like we do.

*Smirk*

[OXENinFLA]

It would be nice if NASA would release the picture.

[e_engineer]

NASA's been trying to discredit the foam damage theory, but it looks more and more like that was the root cause.

From reading this article, I came to exactly the opposite conclusion. This excerpt from the article says the damage in the Air Force photograph is at the wing root:

show a jagged edge on the left inboard wing structure near where the wing begins to intersect the fuselage

But the photos of the foam striking the wing during lift-off show the foam striking farther out on the wing. This makes me tend to agree with NASA's decision to keep looking rather than settle for the foam damage explanation.

[I_dmc]

how could it be foam damage? that's not where the debris hit on launch.

[Sacajaweau]

This news item corrects a falsehood posted earlier that the Russians have had no accidents using using 1/10th the money.

[Revelation 911]

does it strike any one oddly that a photo was snapped basically when we lost contact?

Is ground based photog normal ops ?