[Victoria Delsoul]

Thanks for the info, but one of the most convincing arguments I've read so far regarding the space shuttle disaster was "due to detachment of some of its crucial belly tiles, then -- whether this was actually due to impact by a lightweight piece of debris from the external tank during launch or not -- it indicates that the Shuttle's entire reentry thermal protection system was incredibly fragile, and always has been."

In other words, the possibility exists that this "tragedy will turn out to be due to excessive economizing on Shuttle maintenance and safety programs -- economizing which was criticized, explicitly and at length, by both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees last year -- in order to make it possible to continue funding the Space Station, even in some kind of barely scientifically usable form."

[TLBSHOW]

Your correct the damage control is coming!

[juzcuz]

Disaster due to---???

I don't know if this has been addressed yet by any of you guy's. What if the shuttle disaster was caused by some science experiment gone bad...
I mean, what do we know about what they were doing up there? Taking pictures of the atmosphere, growing prostate cancer cells, I saw a picture of some type of small (electrical)generator displayed by the astronauts. Could something they were working on, that we don't know about,have contributed to this disaster?

[Sabertooth]

I haven't taken a position as to what caused the Columbia to go down, and a problem with the belly tiles is certainly plausible. However, in light of this photograph with the purple electrical streak, and some questions about how high in the atmosphere lightning can occur, I thought I'd post a little background about this information.