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Reuters Shares of Space Shuttle Contractors Fall Monday February 3, 10:43 am ET CHICAGO (Reuters) - Shares of space shuttle contractors Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA - News), Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE:LMT - News) and Alliant Techsystems Inc. (NYSE:ATK - News) fell on Monday, the first trading day after the Columbia shuttle disaster. ADVERTISEMENTAlliant, which builds the solid rocket boosters for the shuttle, tumbled nearly 12 percent, its biggest one-day point loss since its October 1990 debut on the New York Stock Exchange and its biggest percentage loss since January 1993. Credit Suisse First Boston downgraded Alliant stock to "neutral" from "outperform."...

Feb. 3, 2003 IDF to promote Ilan Ramon to Brigadier-General By THE JERUSALEM POST INTERNET STAFFThe IDF reports that it is looking into the possibility of conferring on Ramon the rank of Brigadier – General. Minister of Defense, Shaul Mofaz, raised the possibility Monday with Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant-General Moshe Ayalon. Top placed sources in the IDF have confirmed that the army's manpower division has already started checking into the possibility. Ramon has not yet been termed a 'fallen soldier' by the IDF, since the army is still waiting for a positive identification of the bodies from NASA. Ramon...

Today's lead item at Lucianne.com: Yellow Ribbon Overload: James Taranto in his always meaty collection of wazzup on the web emphasizes the point that the national reaction to the Columbia disaster is more grown-up than reactions in the past and points to 9/11 for having produced a certain amount of scar tissue. He also mentions the Free Republic eyewitness thread on the shuttle's problems that scooped the big guys at the wire services by eleven minutes. Congrats to The Other Site. Way to go, guys.

Nasa 'ignored' shuttle safety alert Nasa 'ignored' shuttle safety alert From Tim Reid in Washington and James Doran in Norwood, Texas Auditors said space disaster was imminent Human remains found during search NASA was last night accused of ignoring warnings from its own technicians and government auditors that a space shuttle disaster was imminent. As the space agency named a retired Navy admiral to head an independent investigation into Saturday’s Columbia disaster, calls to scrap the shuttle programme were increasing. It emerged that as recently as Thursday a congressional audit report had expressed concern about monitoring of shuttle safety. In...

Developing. Watch MSNBC for latest. Internal memo shows some engineers believe there was up to a 7 1/2-inch gash from the foam breakoff at launch. Memo was serious enough to go out to all NASA centers two days before disaster.

Did environmentalism bring down Columbia? NASA probed exact same glitch of insulation striking tiles in 1997 By Joseph Farah More than six years ago, NASA investigated extensive thermal tile damage on the space shuttle Columbia as a result of the shedding of external tank insulation on launch – now a prime suspect in the Columbia's disastrous disintegration upon re-entry yesterday. The problems began when the space agency switched to materials and parts that were considered more "environmentally friendly," according to a NASA report obtained by WorldNetDaily. Did concerns for environment cause shuttle disaster? NASA investigators have quickly focused on the...

PUTTING OUR PEOPLE “IN HARM’S WAY” On Saturday morning, seven human beings disintegrated over the state of Texas while attempting to reenter the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of twelve-thousand miles per hour. Everything had to be just right; otherwise, the intense heat would destroy the spacecraft and its occupants. As it turns out, everything was not “just right”, and the nation mourns. We can question. We can second-guess. We can criticize. One thing, however, we must not forget, as those brave seven no doubt never did. Their mission, no matter the number of previous successes, was a complicated one,...

For the Antelope Valley, space shuttle Columbia represented the pinnacle of the region's aerospace achievement, culminating in the first orbital flight April 14, 1981, with a crowd of 300,000 waiting on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base. Space shuttle Columbia, lost with its crew of seven during re-entry Saturday, was built in California, landed many times in the Mojave Desert and had its last major overhaul in Palmdale.

The loss of the space shuttle Columbia and the potential long-term grounding of the rest of the fleet could doom the partially completed International Space Station, the most expensive engineering endeavor in history and the heart of NASA's efforts to send humans into the cosmos. The $100 billion project relies solely on the shuttle fleet to ferry the tons of parts-- trusses, solar panels, lab modules and dorm rooms-- needed to complete the project. The three remaining space shuttles are the only vehicles large enough to carry construction parts to the lab orbiting 240 miles above Earth. "The space station...

Instructions for Uploading Images and Video Related to the Columbia AccidentFor anyone who has recorded video or taken photos that they believe may be of aid in the investigation of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, NASA has established a special location on the Web where Internet users may upload their media files to be reviewed by NASA. Using the FTP method of your choice, log on to the server 38.201.67.72 as "anonymous," using your e-mail address as your password. Example: User ID: anonymous Password: john_doe@hotmail.com Along with any image or video file that you wish to upload, please include...

Astronauts doomed from the start THE seven astronauts on space shuttle Columbia may have been doomed in the first moments after they were shot into space 16 days ago. NASA officials are investigating whether loose foam from an external tank that struck Columbia's left wing during takeoff contributed to its disintegration under the stress of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere – one of the most dangerous parts of any shuttle mission. The last words between mission control at Houston and shuttle commander Rick Husband gave no clue of impending disaster: Mission control: "Columbia, Houston, we see your tyre pressure messages and...

<p>A San Francisco amateur astronomer who photographs the space shuttles whenever their orbits carry them over the Bay Area has captured five strange and provocative images of the shuttle Columbia just as it was re-entering the Earth's atmosphere before dawn Saturday.</p>

TV news channels report that NASA is saying that its investigators have found the remains of all seven astronauts. A senior IDF Rabbinate official has been sent by the army to Texas to ensure that in the event the remains of Col. Ilan Ramon are found, they will be brought back to Israel for burial. A security official told the Jerusalem Post that the senior officer will not participate in the search or the examination of the remains of any of the astronauts found strewn in the debris. But in the event body parts found are verified to be those...

Feb. 2, 2003 Hizbullah leader: Columbia's destruction message to Arabs By THE JERUSALEM POST INTERNET STAFF Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has said that the Columbia shuttle disaster proves that the US is not 'an all-powerful God' and that even the US is subject to the will of God. Nasrallah said that the destruction of Columbia is a message to Arabs, Muslims, and the Third World that the will of the US is not the will of God, and it is possible to resist the US, reports Israel Radio. "America the strong, which is threatening now with a war, America...

Here is the last known ( published ) photo of Space Shuttle Columbia's Left wing while in orbit.

Rabbi Aviner: Science Is Important For MankindArutz-7's Arik Kahane spoke with Yeshivat Ateret Cohanim Dean Rabbi Shlomo Aviner about the spiritual aspects of the tragedy: "Israel's first space director Prof. Yuval Ne'eman said that men need not be sent up into space, only unmanned rockets. Do you agree?" Rabbi Aviner's response: "That is of course a question that scientists have to answer. In general, however, some say that it's a waste of resources to invest in space study at the expense of other needs such as the poor down here on Earth. This is not true, however, because even studies...

Russia sending cargo ship to international space station after shuttle disaster MOSCOW - Russia launched an unmanned cargo ship on a flight to the international space station (news - web sites) Sunday, a day after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia threw future missions to the orbiting complex in doubt. The Progress M-47 lifted off atop a Soyuz-U rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:59 p.m. Moscow time (1259 GMT) and successfully entered orbit a few minutes later, said Nikolai Kryuchkov, a spokesman at Russia's mission control center outside Moscow. The craft is scheduled to dock with...

‘Punkin Suit’ Pride Feb. 10 issue — We’ve got a NASA channel on our cable TV here at home, and we were going to watch the landing. Suddenly, everything went off the air and they said they had lost all signal. I knew we had deep problems. BACK IN THE old days, it was normal to lose contact for about four minutes during the highest heat of re-entry, but the blackout period now is less. I turned to my wife, Annie, and said, “This is big-time trouble.” We’ve never had a disaster on re-entry before. The launch has always been...