From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Mon Feb 03 2003 - 19:18:41 MST
BillK writes:
> Here in UK, ITV news has just shown remarkable pictures from NASA, taken
> during the mission, showing extensive damage to the left wing of the
> shuttle.
>
> http://www.itv.com/news/
>
> The TV pictures seemed to be clearer than the web site picture above. I
> reckon a large part of the left wing just tore off during the stress of
> re-entry. They didn't have a hope of getting back.
I've been following some discussion of this picture on the
sci.space.shuttle newsgroup. The picture was not released by NASA,
rather it was an Israeli report based on video footage taken a few days
ago when the Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, was talking by phone to
the prime minister. Ramon aimed the camera out the window to show the
viewing audience the Earth, and later people went back to the footage and
saw what appeared to be ominous-looking cracks. You can read an English
version of the Israeli report at http://www.maarivenglish.com/index.htm.
Actually these aren't cracks at all, and that is not the wing of the
shuttle. It is part of the aft cargo bay bulkhead, as you can see from
this picture, http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/images/pao/STS1/10060370.jpg,
which is about 90 degrees off from the one from Maariv. (This picture
is not from this last flight of Columbia.) On this flight the shuttle
cargo bay was filled with Spacelab, and the Israeli picture is probably
taken from within the lab, from much closer to the bulkhead and looking
out across the bulkhead at an angle. The "cracks" are separations among
the insulating blankets.
Another interesting thing about the aft-bulkhead picture is that it shows
obvious missing tiles, although these are on the top rather than the
bottom. I believe there have been several shuttle landings where tiles
were found missing and damaged. However we don't hear about that now,
because it would complicate the story the media is trying to tell, which
is that any damage to a tile could explain the shuttle's destruction.
In fact it's not that simple; the shuttle has survived re-entry with
bad tiles. Maybe this time the damage was worse, or maybe the law of
averages finally caught up with them.
Hal
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