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I think you're getting something confused here. Most shuttle launches are videotaped by military aircraft flying at high altitudes to record the orbiter as high as possible. If you go back to 1986 and remember those classic shots of the Challenger coming apart, keep in mind that those clips were shot with large, specialized pieces of equipment. Nobody who videotaped that launch from the ground would have been able to get that kind of magnification, and the Challenger was "only" 48,000 feet up (as opposed to 200,000+) when it was lost.

Doesn't matter if they were in a plane...

Even if they were flying at 20,000 feet EXACTLY under the shuttle, they were still 35 miles away from it.

But in fact, the angle above the horizon DEFINES how far away from the shuttle they were, because the height of the shuttle AGL (above Ground Level) is known - it is simple trigonometry.

Distance to Shuttle = 40 miles AGL / sine of angle up from horizon.

At 45 degrees above the horizon, the distance = 56 miles for example.

At the end of some of the video sequences, if the debris had by that time descended to 30 miles AGL, having slowed significantly and on its way to the ground, and was at an angle of about 15 degrees above the horizon, the shuttle debris was 115 miles away.

But there is also the other factor - until the material had slowed significantly - it was surrounded by plasma - you couldn't see through the flame to see the parts if you wanted to.

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HOWEVER, clearly the shuttle may well have split into a segment including the aft section as a single piece for a few seconds until IT was shredded to parts by the high forces imposed on large structures, as well as incinerated/vaporized before it slowed sufficiently.

The leading edges of the wings of the SR-71 glow a dull red when it is flying at mach 3+ at 80,000 ft+ - which is why it has a titanium skin. Speeds in the atmosphere above this - about 2200 mph - make things hot, and the only things designed to stand this heat on the shuttle are the tiles.

The largest parts found so far are about 5' square, from what I've heard so far... wouldn't surprise me if it were part of the bell from the rocket engines - they are made of the right material and configured such that they could have been protected for a significant amount of time before the destruction was utter.

The odds IMHO are that a small control surface or section of outboard wing was exposed to air due to tile damage - and was cut as if by an arc welder or palsma torch and separated early - maybe several minutes before the ultimate failure, and then things just cascaded.

Re-entry is relatively gentle compared to takeoff. Forces do not exceed 1 g, compared to 3+ on takeoff plus the vibration caused by the SRB's. The control systems could have compensated for a good bit of instability at higher altitudes for quite a while... before things finally and suddenly cascaded out of control.

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Our condolences are extended to the families of the astronauts - our gratitude and respect to these who perished in exploration, and those who will follow them down these same dangerous paths to the future of our exploration of space.