picture of cracked shuttle wing - is this a hoax?

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-02-03 04:44pm

Lets face it folks, the shuttles are showing their age. Its time to give NASA the necessary funding to design and build a better shuttle. Hell, even a couple Ventures would be a good start.

Burak Gazan · Post by **Burak Gazan** » 2003-02-03 04:47pm

Beowulf wrote:There is no place on the shuttle that you can see the wings from the inside. They could not make a space walk to see the wings. The wings are this funky yellow color. It's almost definitely a fake.

Beg pardon, but you can see the wings, albeit not completely and obviously not the underside of the vehicle:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/ima ... age16.html

has a couple photos that show the wings, including the left wing and outboard elevon in good detail; no damage is visible in the shot.

Agree the Italian paper image is a fake, and a bad one at that...

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-02-03 04:48pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:*smacks forehead* Oh, duh! Atlantis!! I forgot about that one...

Yeah, but how long would something like that take? I'm guessing about a day or two.

Don't have the paper with me, but yes, it would have taken a couple days. Columbia did have the supplies to stay up that long, as long as they stretched food supplies a little bit. They were fine on air and water. If they had launched with four crew members, Discovery would have been capable of bringing all 7 astronauts back with them. That would be the only possible scenario to rescue the astronauts, since the ISS was out of the question due to *deep breath*:

The shuttle did not have the fuel to reach it
If they did, they did not have a docking adaptor
They also did not have MMUs on board
While a transfer would have been possible, it would not have been easy

And I also read today that body parts have been found, ranging from arms and legs to a heart and a torso and head. I've seen pictures of a helmet, which had the visor either torn or melted off. An electronic box was found (smoking) between two tanks of natural gas, 20 yards away from a high tension power line...Columbia could have caused a lot more damage than it did.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-02-03 05:02pm

They also found one of the arm patches of one of the crew...intact.

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2003-02-03 05:07pm

Vertigo1 wrote:They also found one of the arm patches of one of the crew...intact.

i head that a couple of kids..age 4-7 found an arm on a fram in Texas

that will mess up the head of a 4 year old

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2003-02-03 05:09pm

I just hope people are remembering not to touch any of that shit when they find it. Most of it's toxic.

ArmorPierce · Post by **ArmorPierce** » 2003-02-03 05:18pm

Heck, I was grossed out looking at a arm that had be shredded on rotten.com, I wonder what my experience would be if I was 4 and I saw it up close and personal.

Bartman · Post by **Bartman** » 2003-02-03 05:54pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Yeah, but how long would something like that take? I'm guessing about a day or two.

Generally it takes months of prep time to get a shuttle ready for a launch. The next launch, Atlantis, was planned for March, so that mission could have been scrubbed and a rescue mission lauched. But even so I can't imagine it could have been ready in less then 2 weeks. Any less than that and you probably have 2 dead crews rather than just one.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2003-02-03 07:31pm

Oh, shit, it was a Lockheed fuel tank...according to Lockheed Martin, though, it was one of the old ones they had warned NASA to phase out of service by 2000.

Ah, found the USA Today quote I was looking for:

Q: Could another shuttle have been sent to rescue the seven astronauts?

A: Yes. Typically, it takes four months to prepare a shuttle for launch. In a crisis, shuttle managers say they might be able to launch in less than a week. But they would have to skip testing and have a shuttle already on the launchpad. With shuttle Atlantis ready to be moved to its pad, it theoretically could have been rushed into service.

Columbia had fuel and supplies to remain in orbit until Wednesday. The astronauts could have scrimped to stay up a few more days. Columbia's astronauts could have climbed aboard Atlantis in a series of spacewalks. If Atlantis flew with the minimum crew of two, it could have accommodated seven additional astronauts.

And I have to make a correction. I thought it was Discovery that was prepping for launch, rather than Atlantis. My mistake.

KhyronTheBackstabber · Post by **KhyronTheBackstabber** » 2003-02-04 12:27am

Here
http://www.rense.com/general34/columba.htm

Note - Mr. Challender is a world renowned researcher of NASA shuttle flight anomalies. -ed

Hi Jeff,
Thanks for publishing the Israeli newspaper picture on your site. I saw the pic on the net earlier today, but with red circles added, which made it hard to identify. Please compare the two photographs below.

Now that you have published a "clean" version, it can be properly identified after all. This photo does not show Columbia's wing. What it does show is the aft bulkhead of the payload bay. The angles are a little different, but this is essentially the same part of the Shuttle in both pictures. The black object is part of the equipment...and the "crack" is merely a crease in the insulation blanket. I, too, was shocked by the first viewing of the photograph from Israel, but now it is just a nice picture from space.

Kindest Regards,
As Always,
Jeff