doodledee

There have been a bunch of stories today about the work being done to determine the cause of the Columbia's crash. It now seems a near certainty that the infamous 'insulating foam' was responsible for damaging the heat tiles on the left wing so bad that wicked-hot gas could enter the shuttle body during reentry. You know the rest.

When I first heard the 'falling foam' stuff, I personally didn't buy it. I imagined a piece of that pink owens corning stuff falling off some booster or something and then gently floating down and landing on the wing. Bzzzz! It turns out it was much higher-density and - get this - it was traveling 500 mph. Who knew foam could even go 500 mph? Not me.

Today the investigative team invited a bunch of journalists to watch them blast a piece of foam at a section of wing to see what it would do. They did the same thing a few weeks ago, too. I guess they shoot the foam out of a big gun that is normally used to shoot dead birds at airplanes. Eww.

Today's experiment produced an enormous (16" x 16") hole in the wing. [NYTimes story here] It was much bigger than what investigators and scientists believed could happen, and as a result, the foam has already been labeled "the smoking gun". I prefer "the bloody glove".

If you're into this stuff, NASA's official investigation page is loaded with detail. The email transcript stuff is especially fascinating. They go into all kinds of detail about what might have happened and what they should do about it, even down to contemplating different 'contingency scenarios' if the damage was determined to be bad enough. Serious business. Go figure, you don't see very many :-) things from those boys at NASA.