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Columbia - Explain something to me....
I am sure there are people out there in this mists of the internet that are much smarter than me, so please explain something to me using big pictures and small words.
According the the official NASA report the cause of the re-entry disintegration of Columbia was a piece of foam that detached during launch and irrepareably damaged the heat shield tiles on the left wing.
I am obviously missing something here as this doesnt make sense to me. Allow me to explain why :
The piece of foam in question was obviously attached to the shuttle until it detached - this means that the foam was travelling at the same speed as the shuttle itself. When it detached it would start to decelerate as a result of gravity acting on it, but as a result of inertia it would initially still be travelling in the same direction as the shuttle.
The shuttle is 37.2 metres tall so the distance travelled before impact is quite small, therefore the amount of time deceleration forces would be acting on the foam would also be quite small (even taking into consideration that the possibility that the foam detach from the highest point of the fuel pods, the distances involved are still relatively small - ~50m)
According to official nasa data at the point of impact the shuttle was travelling at ~700m/s and the foam object weighed ~1kg. Taking into consideration deceleration & inertia, it seems to me that the actual impact speed would be relatively low* - so how did it manage to cause such catastrophic damage, not unless the tile system was so poorly designed as to allow me to cause serious damage by simply kicking it.
I am by no means a "Conspiracy Theorist" but I rather I prefer things to make sense
* If anybody out there has any experience of the actual equations to calculate deceleration etc I would be interested to see them.
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Comming to London on Dec 20th 
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