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'It's just horrible' 02/01/2003 By KIMBERLY DURNAN / Dallas Web Staff From the suburbs north of Dallas to the far reaches of East Texas, residents heard a deafening explosion and saw flaming debris rain from the sky Saturday as the space shuttle Columbia apparently disintegrated minutes from a scheduled landing. Arlington resident James McAdams, 64, said he found some baseball-sized rubble in his front yard when he picked up his morning newspaper. He described it as "jagged on one section, white on one side and the other side is purple to black like it's been burned." "The FBI is...

Did anyone hear Fox TV report that an AP reporter added a smear in a profile of the crew? This was between 12:30 and 1:00 I believe. The Fox person apologized and slammed AP writer. Did anyone hear this besides me? What is AP thinking besides their normal hate selves.

FoxNews now reporting that human remains have been found in a shuttle debris field. I will spare you the graphic details, but they are not intact.

Feb. 2, 2003 Arafat aide praises Ramon as 'courageous' By LAMIA LAHOUDThe Palestinian Authority praised Israeli astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon on Saturday as "a courageous man" and offered condolences to his family. The condolences were conveyed in a statement issued by Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. In a separate interview with The Jerusalem Post, Bassam Abu-Sharif, an adviser to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, called the disaster "very sad." He went on to describe Ramon as "a courageous man who dedicated his life for the prosperity of mankind." "Anyone who dedicates his life for better life for human beings is dedicated...

Israeli, US astronauts die in shuttle blast over ‘Palestine’ By Barbara Ferguson, Arab News StaffWASHINGTON, 2 February 2003 — All seven crew of the American space shuttle Columbia, including the first ever Israeli astronaut, were killed yesterday when the craft disintegrated in flames just minutes before it was scheduled to land. In a tragic irony, the Columbia exploded with its Israeli astronaut on board over a city named Palestine in the state of Texas. The cause of the disaster was not immediately clear, but residents in north Texas heard a loud boom as Columbia passed overhead. “I could see two...

Originally printed in New Frontiers, the Space SIG (Special Interest Group) newsletter, July-August, 1982, M. Berry editor. You made a mistake asking for mail from those of us who've seen the shuttle. In spite of Senator Proxmire's sober, perfectly reasoned arguments against our enthusiasm, I'll bet you're inundated with personal experiences. Proxmire's right, but he misses the point. Even those few humans that are logical generally don't dream along rational lines. And ultimately more human progress issues from dreams that from logic. It wasn't logical to be happy in November, 1981, when the space shuttle Columbia ran into problems requiring...

Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle by Richard P. Feynman For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. Introduction It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one...

By John AntczakASSOCIATED PRESS12:03 a.m., February 1, 2003 LOS ANGELES – Space shuttle Columbia appeared to begin trailing fiery debris as it passed over Eastern California early Saturday, well before its destruction over Texas, according to a California Institute of Technology astronomer who witnessed its fiery transit. Anthony Beasley observed the shuttle's re-entry from outside his home in Bishop, Calif., near Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory, where he is project manager of the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy. "As it tracked from west to east over the Owens Valley it was leaving a bright trail. As it actually...

Feb. 1, 2003 Ramon to be remembered in Israeli schools Sunday morning By THE JERUSALEM POST INTERNET STAFFIsraeli schools are set spend the first hour of class Sunday, the first day of the Israeli school week, on a special program to commemorate the life and achievements of Israeli astronaut Col. Ilan Ramon, who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster Saturday. Minister of Education Limor Livnat instructed schools Saturday night to devote the first hour of the day to discussing Ramon's life, his mission in space and his career as an Israeli Air Force pilot, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert told...

It could be days, weeks or even months before NASA has a clear idea of what went wrong, if ever. "There's a strong possibility they may never know," said John Tylko, a space shuttle expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "There are no on-board flight recorders that are recoverable," as is usually the case in commercial airplane crashes. Nor were scores of cameras recording Columbia's every move, as was the case 17 years ago when the Challenger exploded. Even so, experts list six possible causes of the disaster. In order of decreasing likelihood, they are: ¶Problems with the shuttle's...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Immediate popular reaction in Baghdad on Saturday to the loss of the U.S. space shuttle Columbia and its seven-member crew -- including the first Israeli in space -- was that it was God's retribution. "We are happy that it broke up," government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi said. "God wants to show that his might is greater than the Americans. They have encroached on our country. God is avenging us," he said. Iraqis are braced for a possible U.S.-led war to rid their country of any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons it may possess. Iraq denies it has...

Nineteen Something Written By: Chris DuBois & David Lee I saw Star Wars at least eight times Had the Pac-Man pattern memorized And I've seen the stuff they put inside Stretch Armstrong, yeah Well, I was Roger Staubach in my back yard Had a shoebox full of baseball cards And a couple of Evel Knievel scars On my right arm Well, I was a kid when Elvis died And my momma cried Chorus: It was nineteen seventy something In the world that I grew up in Farrah Fawcett hairdo days Bell bottoms and eight track tapes Looking back now I...

(CBS) The Bush administration said Saturday there was no indication that terrorism was behind the loss of the space shuttle Columbia on Saturday. "There is no information at this time that this was a terrorist incident," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department. "Obviously the investigation is just beginning, but that is the information we have now." A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no threat had been made against the flight, and the shuttle, at an altitude of about 203,000 feet over north-central Texas when it lost contact, was out of range of surface-to-air...

See entire article, but this little tidbit is interesting "A U.S. official also told Miklaszewski that a heat spike appeared on military satellite data around the time shuttle was reentering - it is being examined to see if it correlates to the shuttle and it breaking up. The highly-sensitive infrared satellite, known as the DSP, originally was developed to detect the heat spike of Soviet ICBM launches. As ground controllers gained familiarity and confidence in its capabilities, it has been used to detect everything from oil fires to volcanic eruptions the the explosion of TWA 800 in 1996."

<p>Even with its shuttles grounded, NASA can easily retrieve the astronauts aboard the international space station using Russian vehicles.</p> <p>A Soyuz vehicle attached to the space station could bring the three astronauts onboard back to Earth at a moment's notice. But if the space agency's remaining shuttles are out of service for an extended period in the wake of Saturday's catastrophe, as seems likely, it could prove difficult to maintain the station's operations.</p>

ASHINGTON, Feb.1 — To sleeping Texans who heard the "boom-boom," it was the sound of the sky falling. To the clinical-voiced controller at NASA's Mission Control, it was a "contingency." To Americans already grappling with a confluence of threatening events, the instinctive reaction was, "What next?"Like the space shuttle Challenger disaster 17 years ago this week and the attacks of Sept. 11, the breakup of the Columbia unfolded in real time before a nationwide television audience, sparking many of the same unsettled feelings. Only because the crash began some 40 miles above the earth could the instinct to think of...

Astronaut Ilan Ramon is not the only product of Israeli ingenuity in orbit, and Israel is not merely hitching a ride with Uncle Sam into outer space The founders of Israel's space program periodically must want to pinch themselves. They remind anyone willing to listen that Israel is one of only eight true space powers. It has the capability to develop, produce, and launch spacecraft. These scientists so often repeat this fact that it seems they are endeavoring to convince themselves of its veracity. But with Col. Ilan Ramon's blastoff into space late last week, Israel's space program put another...

Israel’s first-ever astronaut, Colonel Ilan Ramon,was launched into space on January 16, 2003 with Holocaust-era art from Yad Vashem’s Art Museum. Ilan Ramon, a colonel in the Israeli Air Force, contacted Yad Vashem requesting a Holocaust related item to take with him on his launch into space on the shuttle Columbia, due to the significance of the Holocaust to him as a Jew and as an Israeli. On a personal level, the Holocaust is even more meaningful to Ramon as his mother is an Auschwitz survivor, and his grandfather and other members of his family perished in the death camps....

Israel's first astronaut - Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon - is scheduled to take part in the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia's next mission. STS-107 is a 16-day research mission that is slated to be launched on January 16, 2003. The mission is a multi-discipline microgravity and Earth science research mission with a multitude of international scientific investigations to be conducted continuously during the planned 16 days on orbit. Ilan Ramon: "Being the first Israeli astronaut - I feel I am representing all Jews and all Israelis. I'm also the son of a Holocaust survivor - I carry on the suffering...

CAPE CANAVERAL - When Israel's first astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon, lifts off for space aboard the U.S. space shuttle Columbia on Thursday, he will carry a pencil sketch of Earth, as seen from the moon, drawn by a 14-year old boy who died in the Holocaust. Ramon, whose mother survived Auschwitz, the same Nazi concentration camp where the young artist, Petr Ginz of Prague, was killed in 1944, sees his flight as the fulfillment of many people's dreams. "I know my flight is very symbolic for the people of Israel, especially the survivors, the Holocaust survivors," said Ramon. "Because I...