U.S.: No Indication of Shuttle Terrorism

AP | 2/01/03

[kattracks]

WASHINGTON, Feb 01, 2003 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Bush administration officials said they had no immediate information Saturday that terrorism was involved as NASA lost contact with the space shuttle Columbia.

President Bush, who was at Camp David in Maryland, was informed about the situation and awaited updates from NASA.

"There is no information at this was a terrorist incident," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department. "Obviously the investigation is just beginning but that is the information we have now."

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no threat made against the flight and that the shuttle, at an altitude of 207,000 feet over north-central Texas when it lost contact, was out of range of a surface-to-air missile.

Bush was told about the situation by his chief of staff, Andrew Card, and waited for more information from the space agency, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

On a normally slow day, White House officials were scrambling to get into the office. It was not immediately clear whether Bush would remain at Camp David.

"We're all watching TV and devastated and concerned," said John Marburger, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

[Fitzcarraldo]

Did this shuttle go to the station? If not were any spacewalks performed from it. Seems like the opportunities for close inspection of the exterior in orbit were not available in this mission.

[Edmund Burke]

The Space Station has a 10 year supply of Tang.

[ml/nj]

Any indication what the mood is like in Jenin today?

ML/NJ

[WhirlwindAttack]

No way this was a shoot down, not possible at that altitude and speed.
An onboard explosion or catastrophic failure would shread it like we observed.

Who are the remaining crew on the ISS and where are they from? Anybody?

[Dave S]

People at DU are saying Bush/Rove orchestrated this. How sick!!

Kind of like the idiots that blamed the death of anyone Bill Clinton ever met on Bill Clinton.

[Lexington Green]

An American spacecraft carrying an Israeli astronaut crashes and burns in Palestine, Texas............ Is this a sign, Luke? Bet the muslims are dancing in their streets.

[fight_truth_decay]

NASA TV on the Web

Watch NASA TV Now! Pick from several links.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html

[fight_truth_decay]

very eeerie.......! Officials say there is nothing to show this involves terrorisms..Facts are the terrorists are not that Smart!..they only strap bombs to people and donkeys!

[UCFRoadWarrior]

The shuttle was much lower than 200K feet. The video camera used wouldnt be able to record it starting to break up at that altitude. Also, if you notice on the video furnished by TV station WFAA....the video camera's "battery" graphic was on.

Its best never to rule out anything...although those nuts on DU and their Bush conspiracy can be safely eliminated.

[cgbg]

explosive tiles

That would be all it took. But this is an old vessel and as we learned from the O-Ring debacle NASA does have periodic lapses of judgement, particularly at the top and particularly when there is political pressure to "stop the engineering gloom and doom BS and get on with the mission".

A Microsoft "perfection is the enemy of the good" mentality can easily cause disasters like this.

[Dave S]

This was the shuttle carrying the first Israeli astronaut... one of the men who flew in the bombing raid over Iraq in the 1980's...

Which is a remarkable curiousity in this tragedy, given the imminent war with Iraq.

Talk about curious, consider this. This tragedy occured just four days after the anniversary of the Challenger explosion on January 28, 1986. The Challenger in turn blew up, nineteen years and one day following the fire on Apollo One which killed astronauts Grissom, Chaffee, and White on January 27, 1967. Who said that coincidences never occur.

[Dave S]

Did this shuttle go to the station? If not were any spacewalks performed from it. Seems like the opportunities for close inspection of the exterior in orbit were not available in this mission.

I heard that it did NOT go to the space station and that there was no space walk because the long arm that teethers the astronauts was removed to make room for the experiments.

[knarf]

" ... I'm beginning to take a tinfoil hat view of such pronouncements."

I never took it off since WACO ...

My first thought was electronic warfare.

Isn't there some kind of 'pulse bomb' that targets electrons/communications?

[TomB]

The shuttle was much lower than 200K feet.

The shuttle was at 203,000 feet at the time it broke up. The reason you could see it so clearly is that it was glowing with heat as it entered the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

There were threads earlier this morning giving people in California heads up to see the Shuttle reenter. BTW, that height over Texas fits the flight profile.

[4Liberty]

They should line all NASA ground workers up, like the maids, butlers and nannies in a murder mystery - and see if anyone is missing, FIRST. If anyone is - could have been a bomb obviously. Airport & NASA security is not 100%, - 1000's of employees work on the shuttles...
The dems better HOPE OBL or his ilk don't claim credit by the end of day. They'll never see election again, if they do.
An Israeli and an Indian were also on board. Terror could have come from Pakistan.

[BlazingArizona]

Did this shuttle go to the station? If not were any spacewalks performed from it. Seems like the opportunities for close inspection of the exterior in orbit were not available in this mission.

This mission was pure science, and was the only Shuttle in the last couple of years that did not go to either the ISS or the Hubble. Hence, no close in-flight inspection of the exterior.

[ConservativeConvert]

The same week as the Challenger explosion in 1986.
Days after the Sate of the Union Address.
Same week as Hans Blix report.
First Israeli astrronaut in space (who took part in the Osirak reactor strikes against Iraq in 1981).
Falls on Palestine, Texas.

Too many coincidences?....

[Timm]

If there were lost tiles, this fact would be hard to detect retrospectively. Perhaps the debris that sits on the ground could help determine whether there was a bomb of some kind on board.

Assuming that lost tiles were the cause of the re-entry explosion, it would be hard to figure out how, exactly, the tiles were lost.

A few of the tiles have fallen off on prior flights, so the loss of several, I'm guessing, would have been required to cause the catastrophe.

We won't know very much for some time. Perhaps they'll never be able to piece together the accident.

NASA has said that there might be "toxic materials" on some of the debris. Unlikely. Maybe the fuel tanks would have survived intact long enough to leave some fuel on pieces on the ground, but almost certainly not. NASA has issued this warning, I assume, to scare people away from taking debris that might be useful as evidence.

[logic101.net]

I can't see how this could be terror related. With the height and speed when it blew up; I don't think the sand monkeys have anything that could have done so. In fact, I suspect the only thing available that could do so from the ground would be our developing program against missles.

Those who claim Bush did it are just morons (ie. Deomcrats).

MARK A SITY

[The Right Stuff]

I am with you, ST - it's too darn coincidental for me. I live near the Cape and watched the launch. Security was incredibly tight due to the Israeli astronaut being on board. Now it's coming out that he had something to do with the taking out of the Iraqi nuclear reactor?

I realize the odds are high, but what about the possibility that a bomb device could have been onboard set to go off at a certain altitude (and fixed so that it wouldn't detonate on launch?)

I probably read too many mystery/spy novels. God bless the astronauts and comfort and sympathy to their families.