Replies

Yep. I believe it began tumbling not too long after communication was lost. If NASAs statement that the last communication was about a loss of tire pressure, then I have to wonder if something began to rip open in the belly of the craft.

Does anyone know if the landing gear would have been down yet? I wouldn't think so, but you never know...

Landing gear are not deployed until the craft is just a hundred feet in altitude. To put them out any earlier will cause so much loss of speed they would not make the runway...remember, it's a 100 ton BRICK...no engines at all...

I doubt that the landing gear would be down at 200,000 feet with an airspeed of some 12,000 mph. I would think that the landing gear would immediately be ripped apart at that speed had it attempted to deploy.

I suspect that the shuttle had sensors monitoring tire pressure and that might have been among the first alarms to trigger at Mission Control as the ship started breaking apart.

I actually started watching the landing coverage at 8:40AM this morning due to a thread posted here earlier about the landing. I never watch these things on my own and it is an eerie coincidence that the one time I sit down to watch a landing, this happens.

I watched the mission control coverage up until 9:15AM, not knowing that anything was wrong. Those people at mission control are as cool as cucumbers. Nobody in that place was visibly excited at all. When the time for the scheduled landing came and went, I tuned to FoxNews out of curiosity and realized instantly that things had gone horribly wrong.