http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/01/shuttle.columbia/index.html

Mission status is here. There are suggestions of wing tile damage during launch in the 14:40 GMT log entry.

<silence>

Oh jeez, this is absolutely horrible. I vividly remember January 28, 1986, sitting in high school civics class when the Challenger was lost and the teacher came in and told us, and now the Columbia... Total disbelief both times...

sigh.

I was in the school library with 50 other childern watching the shuttle take off in 86.

To stay in context however, more americans die every year in us military training accidents than have ever been killed in the space program.

I hope they dont find this as a reason to cut funding. In Fact who's to say this wasn't caused by lack of funding.

I went to bed lastnight with my tv on, and woke up this morning to the breaking news of this terrible accident. Very Sad indeed!

I woke up to this today. I am nowhere near as numb as I was with Challenger - maybe because I knew that there would someday be another accident? Perhaps because I didn't watch the breakup live on TV?

May the seven souls onboard have a smooth flight upwards to their final home.

Tailwinds and blue skies...
-Greg

From the Shreveport LA radar site, the red is the debris trail.

A chilling image.

And before anyone else asks, the green specks are not a radar image of anything, they're just the random noise floor of the radar system (its gain was cranked up when this image was taken).

Supposedly there's going to be a news conference around 10am pacific time, it's after 10 and it hasn't started yet, I'm gonna go turn on the TV...

Yes, just ground clutter. It is (was) a beautiful morning, no clouds at all over the region. I was out putting mud flaps on the new truck but heard nothing. The lake below the trail is Sam Rayburn, and the trail goes over Toledo Bend on the TX/LA line. Austin is way off to the right the screen.

Oh Christ, not again

I had (a month before in 1986) quit my first job after 3 years of bullying and boredom. I was packing my stuff in my trunk to move out of the house I was in and my friend Bernie came round absolutely breathless from the house he and a few other ex-colleagues shared on the other side of the alley behind me.

"The shuttle's blown up!!!" I laughed and told him to piss off, you wanker, stop winding me up. I've left the job, the jokes are over. "No, no, I'm not joking, it's on the TV now, come on!!!" I was instantly sober: we sprinted 200 metres round the block to the house: Neil, Martin, myself and Bernie stood there open mouthed and dry eyed, without a single word exchanged, for nearly an hour, simply trying to absorb the one fact that the shuttle had been destroyed. Neil was in tears for most of the night and the planned send off at the pub later on was a damp squib: all of us engineers, all of us not really believing what had just happened.

I have just read this report and started looking at the news, and I have had a sickening flashback to nearly two decades ago: the same lurch in the gut, the same feeling of panic, the same feeling of real depression at the death of those people. No bones about it: they are dead, no chances.

This is a truly sad day and it makes my troubles seem trivial by comparison.

"Rest Easy, brave comrades".

apollo 1, jan 27 '67
challenger, jan 28 '86
columbia, feb 1 '03

chilling

I was watching newsround (kids news program non uk folk) after just getting home from school in my parnets house and was shocked and stunned never though it would happen again

What I think is the biggest shame is that launches don't receive as much media attention as they once did. When I was going through grade school, the teachers would still stop class, turn on the TV, and we'd all watch the local news broadcasting the launch in the middle of the day, and it would be in the newspapers and on TV for several days. These days I think it's much smaller news, and that's unfortunate.

other than odd clips ive yet to see an actual shuttle launch. other than the movie apollo 13.

Thats because its old news. Concorde's 1st couple of flights were all over the media, but then nobody cared... until there was a crash.

Sadly, its the same with the space program.

I think that the collective pyschological effect on millions of kids worldwide may be a factor - I doubt that many (if *any*) of the teachers were prepared to deal with 30+ kids who had just witnessed *live* the death of seven people.

albeit a very disconnected view of death. not much impact watching the images of a shuttle fall with little white tendrils trailing.
i was more horrified by watching the scenes of death in final destination 2 last night. whats more disconcerting is the fact that the whole of the audience (including myself) proceeded to laugh after each one.

What I think is the biggest shame is that launches don't receive as much media attention as they once did.

Isn't that because viewers just don't find it as newsworthy any more? Or is that what you're complaining about? A shuttle launch is an amazing thing, but an amazing thing happening for the 107th time isn't news. (If it was, CNN would still be covering butterflies -- a caterpillar turns into a chrysalis-ful of caterpillar soup, then turns into a butterfly. What's with that?)

IMO it's one of the greatest achievements of the shuttle programme if people nowadays are starting to think that space travel is routine. One day space travel must become routine. Today's sad news just shows that we actually aren't quite there yet.

Peter

i was more horrified by watching the scenes of death in final destination 2 last night

I'm more horrified that they made a second "Final" destination

lol
it was a pretty good shocker, as they go.

I can't believe the news either. Terrible, tragic loss.
The knock-on effect is really dramatic too. My sympathies go to all the families affected by this event. There's a school in Australia who were conducting an expeiriment which was on the shuttle. The students had spent four years developing an expiriment to find out what shape spiders would weave webs in zero-G. Now, I'm not placing the spiders lives above those of the crew. But these kids had worked for so long to develop this experiment and had travelled over to the US for the launch and were probably eagerly awaiting the return of thier arachnids.

What I think is the biggest shame is that launches don't receive as much media attention as they once did.

Ironicially, this was probably the only live suttle launch I have seen in the past few years. I believe it was shown on CNN, while they talked about the mission and such.

I just hope this incident dosen't cause us to run back under our rocks and stop looking upward. The Challenger incident had devistating results on our path into space. Risk is part of the job for those who work at NASA, and unfortunatly today we have to deal with the consequences of progress.

some maggots live off anything

auction 3400178632

How sick some people really are and how sad this world is for it.

One second the listing was there and the next it's gone - good, thanks eBay.

The sick and twisted fucks who registered & listed those domains should be taken outside and given a good beating.

enlighten me, i missed it.

What was the link that was being pointed to?

Just read the mission log as linked above, rather chilling stuff.

The eBay listing was for four Columbia disaster related domains like columbiacleanup.com, columbiadisaster.com and so on.