[mikegi]

No, but mountains of telemetry data are available. I suspect the problem right now is not a dearth of information, but an abundance of it. In fact, I would wager that NASA already knows what happened, even if they don't know why.

FoxNews had a video that appears to show the Shuttle oriented 90 degrees from direction of motion. I wish Fox would concentrate on that footage because it seems to me to be the most important in seeing what happened. It was largely intact at the time, which is hard for me to believe given the tremendous stress that would occur.

[eno_]

It was largely intact at the time, which is hard for me to believe given the tremendous stress that would occur.

Just be careful with the math: Even if the shuttle is flying 25X faster than a jetliner, the atmosphere at 200K feet is a tiny fraction of the denisty at sea level. One could easily be off by an order of magnitude regarding stresses. Back of the envelope calculations tell me it is in fact plausible for the shuttle to get sideways and not be ripped to shreds immediately - long enough to be seen on video, anyway.