Columbia's Final Minutes in Detail

grub writes "This article on Newsday has an excerpt from 'Comm Check... The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia,' by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood describing the last minutes of Columbia's final flight in detail."

NASA + ONDCP = CLIT FP

[Sexual Asspussy]

When the investigators ask you why the space shuttle you designed exploded seconds after liftoff, killing seven astronauts and quite probably the entire shuttle program, just tell them you were stoned.

They'll understand.

Re:Hot Gas != Plasma

[sharkey]

Not to be a science nazi, but there's an important distinction between sci-fi-sounding "plasma" and the mundane -- but still deadly -- "very hot gas".

Yeah, it's the difference between White Castle and Taco Bell.

Re:The complexity...

[That's Unpossible!]

Those are the type of people I hope to run into in the afterlife. Those that died doing something, not of something.

Chances are good that those skeptical, scientific people you mentioned would laugh at you for believing in an afterlife.

Not to make light of the situation...

[Quixo-tastic]

...but, honestly, if there's a cooler way to die than at 200,000 feet above the surface of the planet, going 18 times the speed of sound in the world's most expensive and high-tech airplane, wearing a day-glow orange jumpsuit that says McCool [czest.pl] on it, I'd really like to know.

Re:It's not a plasma, something else

[Glonoinha]

Yup - I checked and I was wrong, what I described was a supercritical fluid and not plasma.

Damn, there goes my marketing budget on next year's super gotta-have national defense weapon.
'Plasma weapon' is something the common people can relate to and congressmen will spend money on ...
'Supercritical fluid weapon' just sounds a little too phallic and borderline gay.

Damn. I may stick with my original definition of Plasma just for marketing purposes.
Back me up guys, if anybody questions it - you know the truth, I know the truth, but they don't need to know the truth.