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Shuttle Breaks Apart Returning To Earth, Killing All SevenFEBRUARY 1, 2003 · 14:01
Columbia disintegrated over central Texas at 9:00 this morning, sixteen minutes after re-entry began. The cause was determined within days: a piece of insulating foam had struck the left wing during launch, and nobody at any of the three organisations involved had reported seeing it do so.
NO PHOTOGRAPH. NO PHOTOGRAPH EXISTS. THERE IS A DIAGRAM IN THE REPORT AND IT IS NOT A PHOTOGRAPH.
( FILE PHOTO )
NO PHOTOGRAPH. NO PHOTOGRAPH EXISTS. THERE IS A DIAGRAM IN THE REPORT AND IT IS NOT A PHOTOGRAPH.
There was a video. There was a video the whole time, in several buildings, on the morning of the launch.
HOUSTON, February 1 -- The space shuttle Columbia was lost this morning during re-entry, killing all seven crew. Contact with the vehicle was lost at 8:59 a.m. Central Texas, where debris was found across a wide area, watched it come apart.
Investigators established within a week that the damage was caused on launch by a fragment of insulating foam from the external tank, and that the event was visible on camera to several hundred people, in several government agencies, on the morning of the launch.
The organisation that manages the vehicle has been criticised for a culture in which such observations were not escalated, a criticism which the organisation's own internal report accepted six years later in language that nobody believed could be written by an organisation which had not changed.
Corrections: none so far. Published items are never corrected, they are replaced,
and the replacement keeps the original in the archive, where nobody will look for it.
COMMENTS (412) — showing the 10 that survived moderation
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GoneFishingDave
Joined: Apr 2001 · Posts: 2887
· A caravan · 2 minutes later
I am an engineer and I want to say something that will get me shouted at: the failure was not the foam. the failure was that the person who saw it had no way to be believed and knew it.
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AuntMargeReadsThePaperLoudly
Joined: Oct 2001 · Posts: 820
· Akron, OH · an hour later
seven people. I have worked in an organisation that had the same reporting structure. I want to be precise: the foam did not kill them. the silence killed them.
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InbredJoe
Joined: Aug 2000 · Posts: 2894
· a trailer park · same afternoon
my son watched it on his birthday. he was nine. he asked me why nobody said anything. i did not have an answer that a nine year old could use.
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DELETED_BY_MODS
Joined: May 2003 · Posts: 5
· banned · that evening
the report says 'normalisation of deviance'. that's engineers' language for everyone agreeing to agree with each other. i have been that person at a job.
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xX_XBOX_Xx
Joined: Jan 2003 · Posts: 1320
· redmond · the next morning
eight years later they still send flowers to the crew. I have seen it. it is on the anniversary, every year, at a ceremony at the base, in front of people who were not on the vehicle.
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Hippie586
Joined: Jul 1998 · Posts: 1500
· Eugene, OR · the following day
we went to the moon because the Russians were going first and if we had not gone they would have put a flag on it and it would have been THEIR flag and you know it
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OldAndBald
Joined: Jan 1999 · Posts: 6677
· a recliner · two days later
OldAndBald wrote:
Shuttle Breaks Apart Returning To Earth, Killing All Seven my parents bought a house in 1989 because the paper said prices would never go up. they were right. for 3 years.
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TruthTeller69
Joined: Mar 2003 · Posts: 654
· Akron, OH · a week later
TruthTeller69 wrote:
my parents bought a house in 1989 because the paper said prices would never go up. they were right. for 3 year... this is the same thing that happened with the falklands and with the gulf and we were fine, and then we were fine the other time too, so we will be fine
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internetwasbetter
Joined: Jul 2002 · Posts: 2440
· a modem · 2 minutes later
my uncle worked on the capsule programme and he says none of this is right and then he tells the story anyway
House rules, posted since the beginning and enforced by one person:
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