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February 01, 2003
party yo, shuttle disaster
wonderfull party. lots of fire. some throwing of high explosives. the perenial bear runs. 1/2 gallons of bourbon. while oscar wilde would have left early, very few others did. tim wod and i left at 4:30, and there were still a pile of people in the kitchen. Sarah krensky was in from assendof maryland. a republican party animal was spotted. about the only people who weren't there from the pilsen/humboldt flitterati axis was neville and rachal. and hairball and natalie. and mike bulka. none of the illamas was hurt in the course of the festivities. but mackie did get stepped on a few times and bukka was scared shitless of some cherry bomb (besides which, their dogs, not illamas). the fashion statements were more varried then usual, a lot of pleated pants on the twentysomething males, little in the way of the NYE finary. i did spot one megadeth t-shirt, a shawl, a mailbag jacket, and nat's side laced leather pants. kenneth stole jimbo kirk's shirt, and i even cut my hair for the affair.
sorry ya missed it.
i slept through the shuttle disaster. my first cynical response is i wonder who shru hangs out to dry this time? and who'll figure out what really happened. the shuttle wasn't meant to be in service this long, and the followup programs have been mired in red tape and budget cuts. the last version of it's replacement is in bidding now, as part of shrub's subsidize the rich program. damn damn damn.
my second response is to hit the blogs: actually to hit berlingers, then to go get the new iin detail. the details are sparse and point to the take off tile fracas being serious. speeds quoted are contradictory, as are altitudes. sensors began dying and then the left wing aprently sheared at 9am. again, aprently and possibly. no one wil now for certain till the coverup...don drake has an animation of weather radar of the debris here. berlinger is here.
Columbia beaking up. saltire's coverage. from scripting news:
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Andrew Juby: "My roommate has access to Goddard Space Flight Center's Orbital Information group server. He can pull up data on just about any non-classified orbiting object. We checked it this morning and pulled up some data on Columbia, and ran it by the aerospace major across the hall. It appears that at about 2 or 3AM, as Columbia was into its descent, it pulled up."
human remains have been found. amazing, the human body. mach 18, 13+ thousand miles an hour, burning fuel, and a 200000 foot fall and little bits of us still survive...
amazingly good blog coverage of the disaster. scroll down partway for the charred helmet and mission patch.
Posted by parody at February 1, 2003 09:35 PM
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Comments
There is a great editorial in Time about the space program. It relates how the military industrial folks have used to the space program as a piggy bank, while keeping outmoded, dangerous and inefficient equipment.
I really liked the space program, it was one of those "pure things", like WW 2, where it was clearly a question of black and white. How our sacred cows disapear.
Posted by: Oakey at February 3, 2003 12:51 PM