Air Force imagery confirms Columbia wing damaged (with picture)

Space Flght Now ^ | 7 Feb 03 | CRAIG COVAULT

[Jael]

Bump for this story to stay breaking

[jlogajan]

The proportions look really strange on that photo. For one thing, the front of the orbiter looks more slender and "pointier" than the blunt nose of the shuttle, and the wingtips don't look right either.

Remember this is a negative image. It is white hot. You aren't seeing the entire craft, you are only seeing the glowing portions, as it is still a dark sky background and the non-glowing areas are not in sunlight. Secondly you are seeing it not from directly blow, but off to the right wing side and apparently from behind a bit. It will not look symmetrical from that angle.

[jlogajan]

The damage isn't next to the fuselage like I heard. With the angle of the photographic perspective, it looks to be a ways away from the fuselage.

Actually, the angle of perspective would make the apparent smoke/heat trail appear farther away from midline than it is due to parallax illusion, due to the airflow down and away from the craft.

[jlogajan]

Those bumps represent major damage.

Since they appear to run forward the original leading edge, they aren't "bumps" but heat/smokey airflow down and away from the leading edge -- appearing to run forward of the leading edge merely due to parallax illusion.

[jlogajan]

What is the point of your symmetrical mirroed image. The craft in the original picture cannot be made symmetrical because of the side angle from which the camera sees it. Your image creates an impossibility and is therefore worse than useless.

[Enlightiator]

From the NASA website:

This image is a view of the underside of Columbia during its entry from mission STS-107 on Feb. 1, 2003, as it passed by the Starfire Optical Range, Directed Energy Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base, N. M.

Ah, that explains everything! They were watching the shuttle fly over through one of their fancy targeting systems and -- whooops! -- "Hey, Fred, don't lean over on the console like that!"

lol...ok, we'll add that to the current list of possible causes of Columbia's demise - it won't appear absurd at all with this list:

* Poorly understood electrical phenomena in the upper stratosphere
* Accidental discharge of left main landing gear uphook pyrotechnic actuator (hmmm..could this have been fired by the above electrical phenomena?)
* Meteor
* Accidental discharge of US military secret directed energy weapon
* A piece of foam

[jlogajan]

I think it would be rather important to know whether or not this is an infrared image.

It is a "thermal" imagine in either case, as the craft/air envelope is glowing white hot.

[1ofmanyfree]

To keep this photo in perspective, consider it was taken from Albuquerque looking toward Southern NM. Shuttle was moving from West to East. Rotate the original image 180 deg. to view from the correct angle keeping in mind you are looking up at the bottom which will tend to distort the symmetry slightly also.

[JoJo Gunn]

I'm not really asking you, (it's just that you posted the image).

Why is it that some people such as this Chris Kridler thinks they can copyright a NASA image?!?

[Chad Fairbanks]

Beats the poop out of me...

[Enlightiator]

The sensor pattern could be explained by failure of the wheel well door. Could that have worked its way forward to the wing damage seen?

OK, I've looked over the sensor data timeline, and I'll take the NASA position and not rule anything out at this time...

It is interesting that the first sensor anomolies were the three brake line temperatures starting to rise. I have a document on the main landing gear assembly with graphics, which helps to see the line paths. So yes, we see the first effects here, but if the entire door was open, or evened cracked, wouldn't we expect to see the tires blow (pressure go to zero) rather quickly? I don't have all the drawings necessary to see the main landing gear assembly in the wing support structures, so this makes amateur analysis a bit hard.

[JoJo Gunn]

Oh well, I've been doing some looking around, and some of the images on that site look legit enough. This one in particular just jumped out though. Might have to eat my words.

[Porterville]

I saw one of those at the local adult store. What is it???

[Joe Hadenuf]

Black bird would resemble the image on the right more. Wouldn't it. Jezzzzz.. Must be getting late, or I'm losing my mind again. LOL......