Posted on 02/05/2003 9:12:37 PM PST by kristinn
Edited on 05/07/2004 6:32:39 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The fog of shock and grief is starting to clear, and now we wonder, "What went wrong with Columbia?"
There appears to growing evidence that the shuttle and its crew may have been doomed from the start. If there is anything about this event guaranteed to gnaw at your stomach, it's the idea that seven astronauts went about their duty, performing their tasks, when, in fact, their fate was sealed. Sealed, horrendously and tragically, through no fault of their own.
(Excerpt) Read more at chronicle-tribune.com ...
I don't say that to brag (exploiting the tragedy is revolting) but to note how technology has changed the way average folks can share their experiences--and how we can be of assistance in times of trouble whether by posting our observations on the Internet or recording events with our videocameras.
God bless our brave astronauts.
Good work on the referenced thread!
Since the start of this country there have been risk takers. Some you know of others you don't, but they all took a risk to make America great.
Last Saturday morning one risk taker a freeper named Leadpenny woke early that day and being a fan of the space program decided to start a thread at FreeRepublic to alert fellow freepers that the Space Shuttle Columbia was on it's way home from a journey to space.
The crew of that shuttle had finished a 16 day journey to the heavens. Now on their way home with mixed feelings of having to leave their place in the sky. They had dreams of this journey that was about to end, many from their youth, others from duty to try and make the world a better place. They are the risk takers, strapping into a rocket ship and being blasted into space is no small thing. As Jules Verne dreamed of and wrote of two centuries before.
One can imagine the thoughts these seven people had as they were on their way home. Thoughts of moms and dads wife's and children and all the adventures they would tell them of their journey into space.
In risk comes danger and these fine men and women we're not coming home that day, instead they had another journey to go on. In the finale moments of their lives which we will never know their thoughts, we can imagine as we on earth watched for them to arrive.
Leedpenny's journey was to take a different course that day as her thread would mark a time in history of the risk takers. As the shuttle made re-entry into earth as we know it something went wrong unknown to us back home the brave space travelers were not coming home. As their amazing journey across America was marked forever in time at that thread others were filming it, watching and talking of it as they streaked across a dark early morning sky.
At 9:03 in Las Vegas a freeper put his footprint in history with his thoughts of what was seen. Little did he know that moments later over the clear morning sky of Texas the risk takers would start one last journey as angels trending upward dare to fly. God speed to those that didn't have that reunion with family and children, friends and fellow risk takers or those words spoken of love to the country they had seen from 1000's of miles above. They didn't have to because everyone already knew of their love of country and fellow man through the risk they took. The words of love was written forever in their hearts and ours.
For they in an instant saw God.
.......
Prayers go out to God for these lives lost and those left behind.
.... Here are brief profiles of the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia.
Shuttle Commander Rick Douglas Husband, a U.S. Air Force colonel and former test pilot, was on his second shuttle mission, having flown previously in 1999 aboard shuttle Discovery.
Born July 12, 1957, in Amarillo, Texas, and married with two children, Husband joined the astronaut program in 1994 and worked as chief of safety for NASA's Astronaut Office.
His previous shuttle voyage was a 10-day mission that docked with the International Space Station and delivered supplies in preparation for the arrival of the first crew to live aboard the orbiting outpost.
He piloted that flight, logging 235 hours, 13 minutes in space.
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Shuttle Pilot William C. McCool, a U.S. Navy commander, was on his first shuttle voyage aboard Columbia, but had wide experience as a military aircraft pilot with more than 2,800 hours of flight experience in 24 aircraft.
A test pilot at the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate at Patuxent River, Maryland, McCool managed projects ranging from airframe fatigue life studies to avionics upgrades. He acted as test pilot of the EA-6B Prowler, a radar-jamming warplane.
His primary efforts, however, were dedicated to dedicated to flight test of the Advanced Capability (ADVCAP) EA-6B.
Married, McCool was born Sept. 23, 1961, in San Diego, California.
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Shuttle Payload Commander Michael Anderson, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, was responsible for science hardware aboard Columbia.
Anderson joined the astronaut corps in 1994 and previously flew aboard shuttle Endeavour in 1998, the eighth docking mission between a space shuttle and the Soviet-made Mir spacecraft. Anderson logged over 211 hours in space on that voyage.
Born in Plattsburgh, New York, on Dec. 25, 1959, Anderson counted Spokane, Washington, as his hometown. He was married.
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Ilan Ramon, an Israeli Air Force colonel, was the first Israeli to go into space. At 48, he was a veteran of Israel's Yom Kippur War and the son of a Holocaust survivor from the Auschwitz concentration camp. In memory of family members who died under Nazi rule during the World War II, Ramon took with him a pencil drawing by a Czech Jewish boy.
Ramon logged more than 3,000 flight hours on the Israeli A-4, Mirage III-C, and F-4, and more than 1,000 flight hours on the F-16.
Selected by NASA as a payload specialist in 1997, Ramon began training in July 1998. Born June 20, 1954, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Ramon was married with four children.
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Laurel Blair, a U.S. Navy commander and a physician, was on her first NASA shuttle voyage.
An avid scuba diver, Blair did active duty training with the Diving Medicine Department at the Naval Experimental Diving Unit during medical school. During a later assignment in Scotland, she dove with U.S. Navy divers and Naval Special Warfare Unit Two Seals and performed numerous medical evacuations from U.S. submarines. She was designated a Naval Submarine Medical Office and Diving Medical Officer. and a Naval Flight Surgeon.
Selected for the astronaut corps in 1996, Clark was married with one child. She was born in Iowa but called Racine, Wisconsin, her hometown. Her birth date was not immediately available.
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David Brown, a U.S. Navy captain and surgeon, was a gymnast who performed as an acrobat, unicyclist and stilt walker while attending college.
Brown joined the Navy after his medical internship, and after completing flight surgeon training in 1984, became director of medical services at the Navy Branch Hospital in Adak, Alaska.
Brown logged more than 2,700 flight hours with 1,700 in high performance military aircraft. The Columbia mission was his first space flight. He joined the astronaut program in 1996.
Born April 16, 1956, in Arlington, Virginia, Brown was unmarried.
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Kalpana Chawla, an aerospace engineer and commercial pilot, was on her second space shuttle flight, having been a mission specialist in 1996, logging more than 376 hours in space.
Born in Karnal, India, she studied in the United States, and received her doctorate from the University of Colorado.
She started working for NASA in 1988, studying powered-lift computational fluid dynamics. Her research concentrated on simulation of complex air flows encountered around aircraft.
Chawla joined the astronaut program in 1994.
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