Word: shipful
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Realistic as that scenario might seem, there was no sign of any such crisis in the final seconds of Columbia's flight, and unlike a tile failure, which could well go undetected until the very moment it claimed a ship, a piloting emergency would at least leave the commander time to sound an alert. Rick Husband made no distress call...
...fatigue could have been responsible as well. All four orbiters were temporarily grounded last June when cracks were found in their liquid-hydrogen fuel lines, damage that may have been caused by vibration, temperature changes or other stressors accumulated over repeated flights. Columbia, as the granddad of all the ships, could have been the brittlest of the fleet. But NASA, for all its alleged shortcomings, leaves little to chance in the regular physicals it gives its shuttles, and the fact that these tiny cracks were found in fuel lines makes it all the less likely that larger, lethal cracks could...
...wake of Sept. 11, it's not surprising that many Americans immediately wondered whether terrorism could have been responsible. A shoulder-launched missile could, in theory, bring down an aircraft, but Columbia was well beyond a missile's altitude limit at the time the ship disintegrated. The idea that an explosive could have been smuggled aboard got no serious attention. It would be almost impossible for even the most committed terrorist to breach NASA security, all the more so with the heightened protection thrown up around a ship carrying an Israeli astronaut celebrated for having participated in the attack...
...that should fail. But once they're gone, will anyone be back? The space station can't operate without the shuttle to service it, and with 40% of the tiny shuttle fleet--not to mention 14 lives--now claimed by explosions, it may become indefensible to fly the ship...
...revealed three divots on the underside of the craft, one of which is 1.5 inches long, adjacent to the wheel-well where the front landing gear is stored. If superheated gases stream into that open space during reentry, it can create a kind of vapor bomb inside the ship. But the photography suggests the divot isn't deep enough to cause that danger. So far, it looks like they'll be fine...