Columbia Coverage

ke4roh writes "Space.com offers a list of questions and answers about the events and hardware surrounding Columbia's destruction Saturday. They address suspected causes, foam, tile, and some of the alternatives had NASA known the ship would not be able to re-enter the atmosphere." viewstyle writes "PC Magazine has a pack of stuff put together on the space shuttle accident, as they recognized the fact that the space program inspired a lot of tech people in general. What's pretty cool is the section written by a guy there who worked on the computer components in the shuttle." And naturally, the idea of a space elevator is back in vogue again.

Comments

30 seconds of telemetry

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I've been hearing a lot about the 30 seconds of telemetry that was too weak for the computers to display during the shuttle break-up but that is now being analyzed from backups. Does anybody have any more information on what this data?

As I understand it, the last 'good readings' were full-scale low or high on a lot of the temperature sensors, which to me would indicate sensor failure. Several of these sensors reported such values before communication was lost. This kind of makes me wonder what benefit there would be in examining whatever else came back after those failures--I can't imagine the data would be particularly accurate, though there may be some valuable information. Can anybody elaborate?