[Captain Beyond]

My hat is off to you. You are a better man than most. I could not believe how some people were acting over this. They were so adamant that the shuttle could not have broken up over California. What I think happen was TLBSHOW posted the letter from Don Nelson to President Bush outlining his problems with the shuttle program. The letter did not bash W at all. But out of fear of criticism of Bush and that somehow this would link W to the Columbia accident the Bushbots went into overdrive with their spin machine when there was no need to spin at all. First of all no main stream politician was going to commit political suicide by blaming the President for the Columbia accident. The American public would not stand for it. Secondly everyone knows that the President does not, nor is expected to, oversee the shuttle liftoff and retrieval. All he can do is rely on his advisers and the personal at NASA to do the best jobs that they can. Unless it is a mission he has authorized personally or he has vital information in his hands that there is problem he is not going to be involved in the day to day operations of NASA.

After the Don Nelson letter posting no matter what TLBSHOW said he was dogged piled. Most of the threads after that were nothing but flame wars with some good articles and observations about the shuttle being posted on them. But one had to sort through a lot of crap to find them.

[Cold Heat]

They were so adamant that the shuttle could not have broken up over California.

I did not see the flames etc. that you speak of, but I feel like I should say something about the above comment.

The shuttle did not break up over California. It did lose some tiles, nobody is sure how many, but video evidence that has not been released, indicates loss of at least one or two.

That evidence is some pics taken by a astronomer and were taken near the western border.

Most speculate the craft was already over Nevada at the time.

The real solid evidence of problems occurring over California comes from sensor readings of temp increases in the elevons and skin. This was the first indication of trouble and was known from day one.

As to the break up, the shuttle shed more parts over AZ and then more over west Texas and then broke up as it passed Dallas/FW.

From the video evidence location, one would surmise that if any of that made it to the ground, it would be in Nevada.

From the time of the first NASA announcements, we knew of the problem beginning over California.