[MLUG - DISCUSSION] two more articles on shuttle

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Two more articles FYI.  The second one looks really interesting!  What
would cause a bolt of purple lightning??  --Mike


RANGE OF THEORIES, BUT NONE THAT SEEMS TO FIT ALL THE FACTS
from The New York Times

NASA investigators said yesterday that the disintegration of the space
shuttle Columbia had turned into a scientific mystery.

The investigators said they were exploring a wide range of theories behind
the disaster. But they seemed no closer to a conclusion than they were on
Saturday, after the Columbia's shocking destruction and the deaths of its
seven crew members.

Behind the agency's shift away from a single leading theory was a growing
accumulation of facts that do not seem to jibe and explanations that cannot
account for what is known to have happened to the Columbia between its
launching on Jan. 16 and its demise on Saturday.

Computer programs have failed to show how a piece of foam insulation
striking the craft's protective tiles at launching could do enough damage
to cause the catastrophe, officials said.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/national/nationalspecial/06EVID.html>


WEST COAST FOOTAGE MAY HOLD CLUES TO TRAGEDY
from The San Francisco Chronicle

NASA photo analysts are poring over videos and photographs taken from
California of the doomed space shuttle Columbia, hoping to stitch together
a sequence of visual clues to explain the increasingly puzzling loss of the
orbiter and its seven-member crew.

Of particular interest is a startling image taken by an amateur astronomer
in San Francisco, which appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning
striking Columbia at it streaked across the predawn skies.

During a Houston news conference, Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore
said he hadn't yet seen the West Coast videos and photographs being
gathered by NASA imagery and photo experts.

The pictures, shot from different angles and in different locales, coupled
with eyewitness accounts from shuttle-watchers, may create a mosaic of
evidence about the shuttle's crucial pass over California, when instruments
first showed signs of trouble.
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/02/06/MN22145.DTL>
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