Columbia MIA - Space Shuttle

Columbia MIA - Space Shuttle missing over Texas.

Fox adds this chilling comment:

Ilan Ramon, a colonel in Israel's air force and former fighter pilot, became the first man from his country to fly in space, and his presence resulted in an increase in security, not only for Columbia's Jan. 16 launch, but also for its landing. Space agency officials feared his presence might make the shuttle more of a terrorist target.

"We've taken all reasonable measures, and all of our landings so far since 9-11 have gone perfectly," said Lt. Col. Michael Rein, an Air Force spokesman.

More likely, I'd suspect; Columbia's an old shuttle - twenty years of heavy use, now.

Ugh.

UPDATE: Instapundit has seen video:

MORE: Why it's probably not terrorism: (1) if you planted a bomb, you'd want it to go off on takeoff -- that's when everyone is watching, and there's less time for stuff to go wrong; (2) it's basically impossible to shoot down a reentering space shuttle because of its speed and altitude; (3) there are so many things that can go wrong with shuttles, especially Columbia, which is the oldest, without invoking terrorism. I suppose it's conceivable that a saboteur did some sort of subtle structural damage calculated to cause this sort of a failure while remaining unnoticed during ground checks, but that strikes me as unlikely for a variety of reasons.

From the video it looks like structural failure, followed by an explosion as the spacecraft disintegrated. That's unlikely to be the result of sabotage. Most likely it was failure in a wing spar or some other component, probably brought on by age and fatigue, though possibly caused by tile zippering and burn-through, or damage on launch. We'll see. No point getting ahead of things here, but plenty of reason to think it's not terrorism.

Posted by Mitch at February 1, 2003 08:51 AM