Replies

The alignment of the jagged corners seems to be ahead of the left leading edge and is not being seen from directly below but from about a 45 degree angle. I have compared silhouettes of the shuttles with gear down at approximately the same angle when the undercarraige wheel and door is visible in the same position. I therefore assert that the undercarraige door is down and probably the gear as well. Also, the silhouette of the lower nose indicates the nose doors are open!
Your graphic silhouette looks as if it might be 180 degrees rotated, looked at from above in the fuselage area which I find confusing.

You are right, I reversed the drawing, to align with the picture with the chunk out. which makes no significant difference. I have limited graphics capability.

The orbiter was flying skewed at 11 degrees, and it is not a perfect shot, however, we discussed this all before. Go back and look at the justifications, the arguments back then.

Then go back and look at the NASA statements, that the gear door would have ripped off immediately causing disasterous destruction immediatelyj (meaning back over New Mexico) rather than over Fort Worth.

This is a big thread, and doesn't cover everything, but I am not going to argue the points again.

Perhaps the true info will out, Perhaps not.

There has been much fuss made about the landing gear "deploying". However, the one sensor that suggested this is a two state sensor--the gear is either "up" or "down", and this sensor failing produces a "down" reading as it's no longer "up". It appears to be a simple continuity switch, basically, normally closed.

In any event, EVERY other sensor involved indicated that the gear was still up, and I think that NASA has not taken seriously the notion that the left main gear actually deployed.

That photo is NOT of the Shuttle. It is of the plasma envelope surrounding the Shuttle--an important difference. As the excellent overlays show, the Columbia is well "within" this shape--and the gear door could not be visible directly as it does not stick out nearly far enough.

The front gear never gave an indication of being down--and this would have been bloody obvious had it happened.

What that photo does seem to show is a distortion of the plasma flow around that wing leading edge--and that's a little surprising, as it indicates that the wing's leading edge is badly damaged or missing to distrort the airflow that much. It suggests that the impact was further forward than most guesses have put it.

Remember that the "squaring" effect is artificial, because of the low resolution. It's the same effect that made the Cydonia region of Mars look like a "face" in a low res picture, and only later a non-descript pile of rocks.

To be fair, there was enough material coming off the external tank to damage a broad area of the wing, so leading edge and tile damage could well both be involved.

You mentioned the peculiar angle--there are many factors to consider. The Shuttle is nose up, tens of degrees. It is also likely pulling to the left at this point, but I'm not convinced that it's "eleven degrees" because of the various perspectives involved creating artificial "perceived" angles that might just be foreshortening effects.

But at the same time, the Shuttle was engaged in a series of manuevers that had it banking nearly vertical. That picture COULD have been taken from "above" the shuttle, from the side, and the shuttle's image photographically reversed to make it make sense. This would have been done without someone thinking it through, as news folks and possibly even the Air Force techs might have reversed it to make it look right.

Telescope pictures are routinely reversed; this is not something they'd have even thought much about.

A shot straight up from the ground would have caught the Shuttle edge on at this point, I think. Instead, they aimed to the south (remember the comments relative to the horizon) and caught it in a left bank, with the top facing toward them, or a right bank facing away perhaps.

Either way, a significant offset angle is almost certainly NORMAL when the Shuttle is in a steep bank, to balance the forces. It's just "nose up", sideways.

==|=======/ Level Head