Space Shuttle....????

[dmspilot00]

Darn, that sucks. I was just at the Kennedy Space Center over Christmas and saw Columbia on the launch pad. Little did I know it would be making its last flight...

 

[Hugh Jorgan]

amazing

I clicked on that radar link that hippie posted. I freaked when I saw that it was real-time and the debris field is floating like a chaff curtain. It's been five hours and there's still a huge swath in the air drifting to the east. Sad day...

 

[Typhoon1244]

IMPORTANT!!!

NASA is anxious to talk to pilots who were in-flight and observed the break-up. (We were at FL280 over Tyler...it came down right in front of us.) If you got a good look at it, call the Johnson Space Center at (281) 483-3388. They will take down your contact information and a brief statement and call you back when things calm down.

This is the most devastating thing I've ever seen. I just can't believe it. There're no words to describe what I felt when I realized what we were looking at.

 

[uwochris]

My dad was watching it on CNN while I was in a nearby room studying... he told me some witness phoned in, called Dan Rather a jerk, and then hung up, as a prank call.

Did anyone else catch this?

Prayers to all.

 

[shootr]

He called him an idiot.

 

[Airtower]

WX RADAR INDICATIONS?

i am no meteorologist, but i do know a thing or two about weather radar(met minor).

anyway... that debris over the reporting station at shreveport is due to bugs and buildings(usually), the radar return shown over alexandria, could very well be part of the space shuttle.

i just wanted to clear it up so people dont think all the scattering around shreveport is all shuttle debris.

 

[Frequency]

This may be the wrong time to ask but does anyone know if we have another shuttle? I can remember 4 of them.

Challenger (gone)
Columbia (gone)
Discovery and Enterprise (isn't one or both in a museum?)

The reason I ask is getting those other guys back to earth.

 

[VFR on Top]

We have three remaining operational orbiters: Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. Enterprise was built solely for glide tests was never intended to handle space flight.

From what I've read online, it's unlikely the shuttle will fly again anytime soon until they've determined the cause of today's accident and remedied it. The current ISS crew will likely return via the Soyuz capsule currently up there.

 

[EagleRJ]

Several years ago, the government began working on a replacement for the Space Shuttle. The VentureStar would have been a single-stage-to-orbit vehicle that used a revolutionary engine design that was much more efficient. No solid-fuel boosters and no external fuel tank. Budget cutbacks eventually required that the program be cancelled, so NASA had to make plans to continue using the shuttles for the forseeable future. Maybe it's time to build a fleet of VentureStars.

 

[ArcticFlier]

Apollo 1

Virgil Grissom
Roger Chaffee
Edward White


Challenger

Francis Scobee
Michael Smith
Judith Resnick
Ronald McNair
Ellison Onizuka
Gregory Jarvis
Christa McAuliffe


Columbia

Rick Husband
William McCool
Kalpana Chawla
Laurel Clark
David Brown
Michael Anderson
Ilan Ramon

AF