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I was watching TV around 9:30 this morning and ABC broke in with a news flash--NASA has lost contact with the space shuttle Colombia, and believes it to be destroyed, over Texas. They're reporting that anyone living in the area below it should watch out for falling debris. Multiple contrails were seen in the sky above Texas. The space shuttle was at an altitude of 200,000 feet.

Damn...seven astronauts were on board, including the first Israeli astronaut.

Michael wrote:I was watching TV around 9:30 this morning and ABC broke in with a news flash--NASA has lost contact with the space shuttle Colombia, and believes it to be destroyed, over Texas. They're reporting that anyone living in the area below it should watch out for falling debris. Multiple contrails were seen in the sky above Texas. The space shuttle was at an altitude of 200,000 feet.

Damn...seven astronauts were on board, including the first Israeli astronaut.

so that would be 8:30 central time right. I was up then but the WB never broke in the new strory. This should prove to be interting in the sunday paper. (Me I live in houston so this will be a big deal here)

I should point out that all the news channles are saying that you should not go near the any debri since there is some sort of chemical that would essentially choke you to death.

Debri has already been spotted between Houston and Dallas. The news just won't stop talking about it. I sometimes think they milk dramatic stories too much. They have gotten the story out. Just run some scrolling bar on the screen like CNN with more data when it comes up.

Timelessblur,

The WB never breaks with news. They also don't cover the Presidential Talks. That's what I like about it. If you don't want to hear the news crap, you can switch to the WB

I just heard about it coming home on my lunch break, on the radio while driving in my car. That sucks..

They are now saying that debris is falling in a huge area around Texas and some debris is being found in Louisiana.

The news is also reporting that the NASA programming is getting shut down for an undetermined amount of time. The problem is, NASA's shuttles are the only way people can get to and from the International Space Station. They reported that the crew on the Space Station are trapped until NASA decides they want to send another shuttle up. The main concern is keeping them fed up there

if you want cnn has an article on this at http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/0 ... index.html

I though Russsia has it own space program and have there own ways of gettting people up there. It does suck that it shuttle was exploided and what not. From what I been told in the past is the space shuttle is a very risky thing to begin with that ever time the flying that shuttle they push to 97-99% of the max cablitly and when you run something that close to redline for a while something will give that could of just been what happen was something just gave out unexpitly.

Russia has its own space program yes, but I don't think they know (to where they trust it) how to send people up to space. I know they do launch things other then people into space.

Now on the NASA being shut down, I think they at least need to do something about the space station. As far as I know this is only the second time there has been death in the space program, and for that reason I consider it a isolated problem, and they should do something about the space station. I don't think they sign a "we may be left to die" sort of thing before they leave Earth...

No stupid arguments please people--this is a major disaster.

Columbia was the first space shuttle. If you ask me, it was going to happen sooner or later--like what happened with the Concord. Simple equation:

Age + Constant Usage = Something Breaking


In this case, it was the heat shield that most likely failed. It didn't happen until AFTER reentry, which is the most dangerous part of any space shuttle mission.


My sister lives in central Texas..I need to call her..




EDIT: If anything, all shuttle missions are grounded under further notice.

PhaseAMD wrote:I don't think they sign a "we may be left to die" sort of thing before they leave Earth...

the space station has "Escape pods" otherwise known as Russian Soyuz landing vehicles which are the landing stage of russian rockets. also these space shuttles were supposed to have only a one in ten chance or catasrophy i guess 1 out of 113 beat that though it still is sad.
EDIT:

D4D1NK13 wrote:like what happened with the Concord

do you mean the Challenger

holy crap..... this is the first place i just heard about this.......

this isnt cool at all.

Has any major disaster like this happened before in NASA? Like this bad? All i can think of is that fire they had and stuff before launching.

Plasma2002b wrote:Has any major disaster like this happened before in NASA? Like this bad? All i can think of is that fire they had and stuff before launching.

other than Challenger and Apollo 13....none that I can think of that's this bad.

Plasma2002b wrote:Has any major disaster like this happened before in NASA? Like this bad? All i can think of is that fire they had and stuff before launching.

Apollo 13, Challanger, and now the Columbia

apollo 13 no lives were lost though......

this is gonna go down on the books for good