Report: Photo May Show Missing Shuttle Tiles (allowing superheated gas to get in during re-entry)

reuters ^ | March 8. 2003 | reuters

[TLBSHOW]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A grainy U.S. Air Force photograph that NASA (news - web sites) originally dismissed as being too fuzzy may in fact show the deadly effects of missing tiles on the space shuttle Columbia, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

The picture taken in the last seconds of Columbia's existence shows what may be a vortex of superheated air roiling over the left wing and a section of heat-shield panels missing from the leading edge, the newspaper reported.

It quotes an official close to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which is charged with finding out why Columbia, NASA'S oldest shuttle, disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1.

All seven astronauts aboard were killed, just 16 minutes before they were to land at Kennedy Space Center (news - web sites) in Florida.

One theory has been that debris from the shuttle's external fuel tank knocked off some of the spacecraft's heat-shielding tiles about 80 seconds after launch, allowing superheated gas to get in during re-entry.

The photograph may support this theory, the official quoted by the newspaper said.

A plume trailing behind the shuttle's wing looks like "part of the heated material coming off the aircraft," the newspaper quoted the official as saying.

Some analysts believe this suggests "a large number of RCC panels are missing," the official said, referring to the heavy-duty carbon-fiber heat shielding on the wing's leading edge.

With enough panels ripped off the leading edge of the wing, it would have been subjected to enormous drag and the bare metal would have been melted in the heat of re-entry.

"If (the image) is real, and I'm beginning to think it is, it's showing a lot of pieces" missing, the newspaper quoted the official as saying. "Not one, not two ... at least three."

The board sent key segments of Columbia's wreckage to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for testing to determine what they would have looked like on ground radar images of the shuttle.

[TLBSHOW]

more about space shuttle

[bonesmccoy]

Reuters is just parroting what we've been writing for four weeks. Must be a slow newsday for WP and Reuters.

They're plagarizing us.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/835531/posts?page=1,100

[TLBSHOW]

Then the news is getting out as it has from day one...

No matter what, something was wrong over California and a freeper saw it on fire over Las Vegas. What ever happend, if it just keep burning on re entry but made it to Teaxs where it just exploded or something else. I don't know. But at 9:03 eastern thread time here something was already wrong.


52 posted on 02/01/2003 6:41 PM EST by TLBSHOW (God Speed as Angles




it was in trouble over california and Nevada for sure. I say it was in trouble the minute of re-entry.
2/2/2003 tlbshow

[Steven W.]

NBC is reporting that NASA now believes they've confirmed what happened based on tiles and panel they've collected and is NOT due to the debris which left the booster.

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

shuttle tiles

[TLBSHOW]

and what is their thoughts on the matter?

Bottom line is that the Main problem lies with Nasa.

[meema]

bump

[Jael]

Thanks Todd!

[RightWhale]

This is a reference to the infrared image showing the superhot left wing isn't it? That was thoroughly discussed here on FR, and it isn't surprising the mainstream press is just now finding it. They ought to read FR more often.

[TLBSHOW]

bttt

[bonesmccoy]

Yes.
If FR participants were attentive to the thread I started only a few days after the accident, they would have seen a real-time data analysis occuring by former NASA/contractor personnel.

Now, we seen WP/Reuters acting like they've done some homework. The reality is that those losers were plagarizing our thread and failed to give credit where credit is due.

[RightWhale]

FR has become a worldwide thinktank, and a good one, possibly the best ever. It is self-checking, self-correcting, and has 1000s of thinkers. Not at all like one of those minor-league professional thinktanks with a handful of thinkers and a guy that enters the data in some flatfile matrix, FR is a relational database with current data and matrix interpreters of all stripes. There is power here.

[Dark Wing]

ping