Columbia shuttle lost Part II

[Joseph]

Someone here in Napa, said they found some foam about a mile from my house and it was sent to NASA to see if it came from the Shuttle.
If it did, than something was going very wrong early on, and not just in N. Mexico, Texas, etc.
The USA Today had a front page story on this lighting in the upper Atmosphere.

[Tolls]

Whatever started to go wrong began over California, it would seem. I think that's where the tire pressure message from the shuttle crew came from.

[Tolls]

"A high res AF photo of the shuttle over New Mexico show serious left wing structural damage."

Don't over do the "hi-res" bit...I believe this is the photo.
You can make out that there is something up, though.

The sensor details below it are interesting, though.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/investigation/sensors/index.html

[Ned]

Looks like the left wing has detached from the fuselage at its leading edge. Ugly.

[Ned]

NASA now admits that 2000 degree plasma was in the wheel well. They also disclosed an internal memo by NASA engineer Robert Daugherty that said such plasma in the wheel well could cause the tires to explode. This would in turn lead to catastophic failure.

They also admit that Daugherty's memo was not passed on to the fight directors because the outside contractor Boeing said everything would be just fine.

As I said much earlier in this thread, I was willing to bet that someone knew of a risk and that someone else ignored it or made a bad call. The finger may now be pointed at Boeing because NASA's own engineers were quite aware of the risk of plasma in the wheel wells.

[Tolls]

"Heat transfer through the structure as from a missing tile would not be sufficient to cause the temperature indications seen in the last minutes of flight. "

This indicates that it wasn't just a missing tile...I suspect they're back to looking at the foam, and would that have been sufficient to actually puncture the airframe. So they could well have been hit by something else which did the damage.

As for Daugherty's memo, he does state that he is looking at the worst possible case ("I don't really believe things are as bad as I'm getting ready to make them out"), and talks about the damage preventing deployment ("something could get screwed up enough to prevent deployment and then you are in a world of hurt"). I'm not sure he's thinking of the shuttle disintegrating.