In Upon Silence, Paul Frankenstein hints that perhaps he’s got a touch of the blues, and rather poetically dances around what he ought to do about it.
I feel for him. Paul, you’ll get through. A shrink is an acceptable route.
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(Argh! Multiple trackbacks! Why must you plague me so!)
Air Force imagery confirms Columbia wing damaged is the topper today, at Spaceflight Now (an Aviation Week story).
The Chronicle is continuing to build on the purple-lighting-bolt story, including a detailed discussion on upper-atmosphere electricity discharges that’s interesting in its’ own right.
In the story iself, the image to the left of the headshot is a link to a larger graphic that includes photos of the sort of phenomena the reporter and scientist are exploring in the story.
UPDATE: NASA examines Air Force Photos of Shuttle, notes the NYT. The story includes a photo of the image on a large screen over the shoulder of a NASA official, and there appears to be an irregularity in the shape of the left wing (which appears on the lower side of the image).
However, it’s not at all conclusive, and more analysis of the photo is sure to be forthcoming.
UPDATE 2: Spaceflight Now has the image as a discrete graphic. Their article backs up my initial impression above. However, the NASA briefing photo seen at the Times appears to have some minor differences, probably reflective of the conditions the image was displayed under.
Interestingly, the NYT story cites the Aviation Week story seen at the top of this entry. The later story, also at Spaceflight Now, quotes James Dittemore, whom I beleive to be the official in the NYT photo.
He says, in part, “I’m aware there may be some of you who are saying this photo is revealing. We have looked at it, we had it during the week, and it’s not tremendously revealing to us yet. I’m not an expert at looking at these types of photos and so we’re asking experts to do an evaluation of the photo … to help us understand if there’s anything wrong with the left wing.”
Just prior to the news of Columbia‘s loss this week, the black humor of the universe arranged for David at Surfaces Rendered to link my posting of the long email interview we did that became the basis for a short Cinescape piece.
As I was perusing Columbia-related links, I noticed an interesting section within Dan Shippey’s Delta 7 Studios site. Dan is the gent that made his very nice cardmodel of the Columbia available as a kind of memorial.
Delta 7’s models appear to have a relatively high degree of detail along with a clarity of construction that leads me to describe them as elegant. I was examining his wares, thinking, “Boy, I wish I had time to build that,” when I noticed this subsection on his site amid the models of historic and designed-but-never built spacecraft:
Retro Rockets is the home of Dan’s collection of golden-era SF rocket models, including as may be seen here, the very Saturn Shuttle that figures so prominently in David’s Man Conquers Space project.
There’s a passel of other cool ships here as well, including the obligatory free model, “Rosie Retrorocket.”