[posted] it looks like space shuttle columbia blew up! (fwd)

Here is a list of what I have been able to find out on short notice.

Space Shuttle Columbia Breaks Up 40 Miles High Over Texas

Here are the salient points as I have been able to gather them
from several sources.

1.  Speed was about 12,500 MPH. . .or Mach 6, 6 x speed of sound.
    [Note speed of sound is faster at higher altitudes]

2.  Time of the event:  Earliest eyewitness [earwitness] 8:09 CST
    Last telemetry received 8:16 CST / 9:16 EST.

3.  Earliest eyewitness says the Columbia zigzagged before breaking up.
    [You don't get to zigzag much at 12,500 MPH without breaking up.]

4.  Prolonged very loud sound, multiple people said it was 90 seconds,
    where a normal sonic boom is only a fraction of a second.  Whether
    this was due to multiple sonic booms from the dozens of pieces, or
    from an ongoing explosion was not stated. . .I'm guessing at these
    were multiple sonic boom effects, prolonged by the pieces not in a
    "flight attitude" that would minimize atmospheric air contact.

5.  Many pieces on ground southeast of Dallas, witnesses said they can
    only describe the sound made coming down as "boomerang sound."

6.  Looking at the NASA graph, right hand screen, which I presume is a
    "glide path". . .I can see that the Columbia was not pulling up, I
    do NOT know if they should have been at 200,000 ft. . .I have been
    to NASA and flew a shuttle simulator, but I don't recall what they
    had as the optimal altitude to start pulling up.  My apologies.
    A little Google search found that shuttles level off at 2,000 feet
    . . .so perhaps they were still on the glide path at the time.

7.  I'm probably stretching as far as I can here, will try to find out
    a bit more and get back to you. . .some of this is NOT repeated on
    the network news coverage.

My apologies for any errors, typos, etc., I'm doing the best I can.



Michael



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