Posted on 02/01/2003 5:38:08 AM PST by leadpenny
Space Shuttle Columbia is in a decent for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and will pass over the San Francisco Area around 6:00 AM Pacific Time. Route will take the Shuttle over Las Vegas, Flagstaff, etc. NASA has still not decided which runway will be used. Landing will be at 9:16 AM Eastern.
What warm thoughts and words. As a true hero type, you give credit to others.
May I say... THANK YOU for serving our country in Viet Nam. YOU are one of my heroes, leadpenny. I'm sure you were a brave young man... flying helicopters low and close to trees. Thank you.
The memorial service is at NASA/Johnson Space Center on Tuesday. President Bush and his wife will be attending. I'll be there in your stead, also. The space program will endure. BTW, just talked to a NASA pilot friend of mine. He's leaving for North Texas in the morning. He can't say why he's going there but we can use our imagination.
Great comment!
I had not known you before this thread leadpenny and thus was unaware of your helicopter pilot service in Viet Nam. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service to our country. I was in grade school, high school and the start of college throughout the VN War years. As a grade school child I remember seeing on the evening news with Walter Cronkite (My mom knew NOTHING of politics and in those days there was no cable of course!)and heard the large numbers of body bags coming home everyday. It left a strong impression on me but not as strong as when it hit close to home. One of my closest friends who went to school with me and lived on my block had a Dad in Nam. He didn't make it back. I remember clearly the day we found out. I was at her house playing with her when her mom came in and told her. I lost touch with that friend after grade school, when we moved away. But, many years later I went to "The Wall" in D.C. and found her Dad's name. I remember clearly feeling the lettering of his name under my fingers as I felt the granite. I am 46 today, and I can still feel that cool ingraving to this day. I now have a photo of his name on that Wall in a collage of photos on our livingroom wall.
Again, I thank you for your service.
I've seen one landing in person at KSC and many on TV. The Orbiter seems to make it's final turn, while losing much altitude, just as you mentioned...from the SW.
The only thing I've heard from NASA officials today was that the Orbiter was correcting itself to compensate for the yawing or pitching caused by the left wing leading edge problem.
Did you catch Larry King last night, Saturday, when he had on a pilot who watched the shuttle fly overheard from out west somewhere? He insisted that he and some other pilots who witnessed the fly-over all believed the shuttle was flying much lower than 200,000'.
Early reports on FR gave conflicting altitudes also.
Plus, if they were only 16 minutes to touchdown, wouldn't they be much lower in the sky prior to landing?
And it's been reported they were going 12,500 mph over Dallas, due to land in 16 minutes. But it's only about 1,200 miles from Dallas to KSC. At that rate of speed, they'd be landing in seven or eight minutes. So were they going too fast at that point, "out of control," or has the speed been misreported?
Also, given they had already entered the atmosphere around 5:45 am, as you, Leadpenny reported, they must have been flying lower to result in any intact body parts being recovered. Especially given that the debris was generally found directly beneath the flight path.
And finally, have we heard anything about the exact communications with MC 15 minutes before the final "Roger, bu..."?
Such a tragic puzzle.
Both the telemetry from the shuttle and the ground-based radar would have noticed if the shuttle were off its glidepath. No one from NASA has mentioned that when they gave the list of anomalous readings or indications, so...
Plus, if they were only 16 minutes to touchdown, wouldn't they be much lower in the sky prior to landing?
The shuttle "flies like a brick", and has a very steep glidepath. It drops pretty fast while flying in for a landing, so 16 minutes from touchdown it'd still be pretty darn high.
And it's been reported they were going 12,500 mph over Dallas, due to land in 16 minutes. But it's only about 1,200 miles from Dallas to KSC. At that rate of speed, they'd be landing in seven or eight minutes. So were they going too fast at that point, "out of control," or has the speed been misreported?
That sounds about right -- remember, they're at 12,500mph at that point, but *decelerating* rapidly. Yes, they'd overfly KSC in 8 minutes if they didn't slow down at all, but they *are* slowing down.
In fact, doing the math in my head, I believe that for a constant deceleration from speed X to zero over a given time period, you'll travel half as far as you would have in the same time if you didn't decelerate, so yeah, 8 minutes to KSC at 12,500 should work out to exactly 16 minutes to KSC if you're smoothly decelerating so that you're at "zero" speed on touchdown.
Also, given they had already entered the atmosphere around 5:45 am, as you, Leadpenny reported, they must have been flying lower to result in any intact body parts being recovered. Especially given that the debris was generally found directly beneath the flight path.
How do you figure that?
There's probably lots NASA hasn't mentioned.
Did you hear the pilots on Larry King?
How do you figure that?
What? That body parts wouldn't be "intact" after supposedly falling 230,000'? That's 45 miles up...post explosion.
I mentioned something about that on another thread. Normally it's too high as it passes over Dallas for us to hear a sonic boom. The last time I saw the shuttle landing approach was at night, around 10:00 pm. The next morning the vapor trail / ionized air / whatever that marked its path was still visible, it had not yet dissipated. Columbia's trail was gone within 30-45(?) minutes after it passed over.
It is difficult to guess the height, but since the trail was gone and we heard the booms, that tells me that it was far lower than normal once it got to this area.
From this thread.
Talk about, "eerie." After listening to Jay Barbree of NBC News at the Cape, it seems like the recently released internal memo indicates that all of the NASA Ground Controllers were holding there breath as the shuttle re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. When I made the subsequent semi-flippant remark, "We can only hope," I wonder how many of the controllers were thinking just that?
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