What do you think could have happened?
You focus on two issues on reentry. It’s quite different from what you’d
look at on launch. On launch, you’re loaded with fuel. You’ve got the two
solid rocket boosters that don’t shut off until the fuel is spent. You’ve
got a huge external fuel tank that’s loaded. But on landing, fuel isn’t
really an issue. It’s powered by gravity.
So you’ve got the heat of reentry. And if you’ve got a shuttle
that’s as old as Columbia — it’s the oldest in the fleet — you wonder about
structural fatigue.
The Columbia had been refurbished. Could that be an indication there
was trouble with the craft?
They refurbish these things periodically. They’re sent out to
California and completely refurbished, or at least they can be. You would
tend to suspect problems with one that hadn’t been refurbished, rather than
one that had.
What is the likelihood that the shuttle was a target of terrorists?
I think you would have to have the most sophisticated equipment
possible and have it in place in the United States. It’s travelling at
almost 13,000 miles per hour and I don’t know of any anti-aircraft missile
that can travel at those speeds. It’s also at 200,000 feet above the
earth. I don’t think it can go that high and that fast and have it
penetrate the atmosphere.
What we’re looking at now is at what point of reentry is the heat at
its height. Was it dealing with the most heat when the accident
occurred, or had it already passed through most of that?
If there was a sign of trouble, could the crew have done anything to
prevent the disaster?
When it’s landing, it’s really a flying brick. You have very little
control over it like you would in a jet plane. You’re sitting there,
buckled in. You’ve got a computer that’s guiding it, it’s like a glider.
There’s really nothing you can do at that point. By looking at it, it
probably happened very quickly and the only person in any position to
manuever it would be the pilot. But even at that point, it’s computer
guided. He can take it off the computer control, but there would be very
little to be accomplished in that.
