Didn't NASA debunk the whole 'it broke apart over California' story saying the flashes that were seen were plasma flashes?
Listening to the Sunday afternoon briefing, NASA had backed away from that "plasma" theory and was going to integrate eye-witnesses accounts from California with their telemetry timeline.
>>Didn't NASA debunk the whole 'it broke apart over California' story saying the flashes that were seen were plasma flashes?<<
San Fran to Dallas at an average speed of 14K mph would take 6.9 minutes.
It is highly plausible, and may in fact be known already, that the complete failure sequencetook longer than that, and that it started with tile loss, which may well have been visible from the Bay area.