February 01, 2003

Dale Amon hypothesizes on what

Dale Amon hypothesizes on what happened:

I suggest there was damage to the TPS on one wing, causing a burn through and structural damage leading to failure of the wing structure when aerodynamic forces built. The shuttle has very high wing loading, so any loss of margin would be disastrous. If one wing fails, the shuttle will immediately roll violently into the direction of the failed wing followed by god only knows what sort of tumble. It would break up into major components almost immediately. That is what we saw on the clip.

"Columbia Feared Lost"

---

Rand Simberg also speculates and mentions that building another shuttle is impossible because all the tooling is gone.

"History Repeats"

---

Space Flight Now has a small video (animated gif) which appears to show something coming off the main fuel tank during lift-off.