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"No missile can shoot that high, and the security around Columbia was air-tight—Saddam would have had more luck planting a bomb on Air Force One. If this was terrorism, we're all in big trouble, because either the hand of Allah reached down and swatted the craft out of the sky, or Saddam really does have a captured UFO...."

Straw man. There is the remote possibility that an Islamic is in NASA, don't you think? Someone like Malvo perhaps? Gee, you never know.

The change between any two states is always the most turbulent. Initial liftoff and re-entry through the atmosphere have probably the greatest number of physical stressors, in quantity and quality, known and unknown, which are the most diffucult to account in design.

For example, imagine a Perfect Storm arising in the Gulf Stream or higher altitudes or in transition between altitudes. Such an event might easily overwhelm the flight systems by several magnitudes. 200,000AGL and Mach 7-15 is in itself an environment which research has far from been exhausted.

But there also remains significant political value in targeting NASA programs as terrorist targets or as a method to send a stealthy signal to those in power. It's for this reason that IMHO, inquiry is justified into these possibilities.

For example, if a foreign enemy of the US had a technological ability to defeat launch or recovery systems or to interere with US control of space, then the display of such ability might be used to alter our perception of our center of gravity and redirect our foreign policies.

If a foreign enemy has the intellectual power to research and build nuclear weaponry, I'd dare say far many more strategic and tactical devices other than NBC are also in their domain of interest and a revolution in military affairs might not be as assymetrical as one might like to believe.

IMHO, this is the worst threat from allowing known foreign enemies such as Iraq's Hussein to remain unfettered in their pursuits. Time is not on our side in the war on terror.

"There is the remote possibility that an Islamic is in NASA, don't you think?"

I'm sure there are many Muslims in NASA. I'll even grant the remote possibility that one or more of them are terrorists like Malvo. But one guy sneaking into the Vehicle Assembly Building to plant a bomb on the orbiter, or even just sabotage it by breaking off a few dozen tiles, is impossible. Every time anybody touches the orbiter, his work is double- and triple-checked just for basic safety reasons, let alone for security reasons, so you'd need not merely one terrorist mole but dozens of them working together inside NASA over many years—and even then their plan would have been foiled by the increased level of security and scrutiny this particular flight received because of Ramon's presence.

No, Pravda's "Saddam got UFO technology from the Zeta Reticulans" theory is a much more promising line of inquiry.