Shuttle Contact LOST-No Tracking Data During RE-Entry!

Nasa TV | 02/01/03 | GRRRR

[GRRRRR]

Shuttle has NOT been heard from or seen on tracking radar since 0800Hrs CDT. No contact at Merrit Island tracking station, no voice comm...DEVELOPING.

[George W. Bush]

Ivan.......Is Tony Blair still in the US? Was he here for the weekend or just yesterday?

I hope Tony is still here in the States. Despite misgivings I have about his domestic policies, he's a good and loyal friend to us.

[dep]

no, it's true. the shuttle program has been horribly mismanaged from the get-go, unfortunately in large measure due to nixon's insistence that the space program pay its own way. i did a long piece for the miami herald in 1989 in which a lot of nasa engineers told me that so many corners were cut that they cross their fingers whenever there's a launch.

that having been said, it would be useful to find out who was in the ground crew and what contractors had access to the shuttle before it flew this time. yeah, i'm talking ethnic profiling here. it wasn't shot down, but it could have been tampered with on the ground.

and that having been said, there's a long history of screwups in ground handling. had bill nelson's flight gone when it was supposed to, it would have been blown up because of a probe left in a fuel line.

dep

[SpookBrat]

"...one like this would be enough for a lifetime."

I was thinking the same thing. Poor guy.

[HiJinx]

How sad, indeed...

Posted on the Challenger thread last week, I saw one news video that was never shown again re: that disaster. It was the face of a mother looking at her husband when she realized what it was she was looking at, and that her son or daughter had just died. Terrible.

Pray for comfort for those who lost family and friends this morning.

[areafiftyone]

CNN had a major close up of the shuttle butning up. SCARY - Prayers for the families! HOW HORRIBLE

[The South Park Republican]

You're no better, insinuating that Tom Daschle will be happy with this and seeing it as a political advantage.

EXACTLY!!!!

The idiots on DUhhh are saying President Bush will try to use this to his advantage.

Both comments are assanine.

[Jambe]

We moved to Florida last year from North Texas, north of Dallas. When the space shuttle takes off, it flies directly over house. This is very sad. My hands are shaking and I can't type very well.

So which part of the Atlantic ocean do you live in?

[MadIvan]

And the idiots on DUhhh are already saying Bush will use this tragedy to "Comfort the people just to get his positives higher".

I would not want to be the President right now. There is so much on his plate - the work is incredible, and the sniping from his opponents is just disgusting.

The members of DU are utter filth, we know this already.

Regards, Ivan

[Wyatt's Torch]

Remember the enormous celebrations in Israel when Columbia took off? It will be very sad to see the reaction both in Lsrael and the Islamic countries after this disaster.

[Peach]

No, domestic events meetings are natural occurring meetings when things of this magnitude happen. In fact, given that the shuttle was 200,000 feet in the air, it is nearly impossible a missle could reach that far and the administration has said they do not believe this was terrorism.

[July 4th]

I've been hearing this story about insulation for a while - can any find a story??? I'm having no luck.

[af_vet_rr]

The shuttle is and has always been an engineering disaster waiting to happen. We can hardly be surprised that this has happened again.

I spoke with a friend I served with (He was involved in maintenance of B-52s for twenty out of his thirty years in the AF) and he wasn't surprised at all. He mentioned that when the Shuttle was originally built, they guesstimated that 1 out of every 25 missions would have a serious problem, just because of the complexity of the Shuttle and the stresses it endures when it launches and comes down. He thought the odds were a little low, but that NASA pouring over the things in between missions minimized the chances of a problem.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take much at 12500 miles an hour to cause a problem that is unrecoverable. I'm sure the terrorist and conspiracy types are having a field day, but I don't believe there are any missiles made that could hit a target at over 150,000 feet at 12500 miles an hour, especially outside the US.

This is going to sound cold-hearted, and it's not meant to be, but the Space Shuttle is risky business, and accidents are going to happen. People in this country have become soft over the years and don't realize just how dangerous space travel can be. We are going to see a lot of money spent going in circles (especially Congress, they like this high-profile/high-tv ratings stuff and will milk this tragedy for all it's worth) and more than a few will probably say we need to end the space program.

My opinion, since this was probably an engineering/age problem, this should in fact spur us on to replace the shuttle fleet. They were never meant to be in service this long and there are plans for much more efficient, and much more safer mods of space flight. Take some of that 15 billion going to AIDs patients in Africa and reroute to NASA and overhaul our space fleet (okay, now that's cold-hearted but I don't care, it's my tax dollars).

[Molly Pitcher]

Exquisite. Thank you.

[theFIRMbss]

>Don't look for any shuttle flights for a long time. The review boards will be endless.

And now there's no one
with Richard Feynman's stature
to get the job done...

[Michael81Dus]

They´re in heaven now. Let´s hope that this tragedy was not caused by a human willful. I pray to God that it was an accident!

[Texas_Jarhead]

I was referring to the foam that made contact with the left wing during launch not re-entry

[MadIvan]

I believe Blair came back yesterday evening.

Regards, Ivan

[Valin]

These folk know the danger and willing accept it.

[society-by-contract]

Americans are an inquisitive, exploratory people. Explorers are always on the edge. We will suffer losses because we lean into the wind of discovery. Hail the brave!

My thoughts are with the families of the astronauts. Perhaps private space exploration will have a better future. American explorers were motivated by market forces rather than the bureaucratic largess of NASA.

[Petronski]

Nothing against flowers, believe me, but why not wait until some kind of scholarship fund is set up for the victims survivors?