Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster from NASA TV

NASA TV footage of the Space Shuttle Columbia's tragic ending starting with liftoff.

• Category

  News & Politics

[jbalsle]

Funny then, because some of the Columbia engineering teams must have had precognition so they could have hindsight bias before the accident (source: Popular Mechanics, 5 Years Later, 5 Hard Lessons From the Columbia Shuttle Disaster, 1 Oct 2009 ). Much like a previous Shuttle mission, involving an engineer who thought that launching in sub-freezing temperatures may be a bad idea, this ended in tragedy. ""Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

[Charlie Stanton]

It's called the hindsight bias - none of this was predictable, yet after the incident everyone thinks seeing such problems is an obvious and easy thing to do. Not at all. If different actions could be taken then they would have been. This was cause by a small foam strike on the leading edge of the wing which damaged the thermal protection system. Non of this could have been predicted or prevented.

[aerolooper]

This all happened cos of laziness and ignorance... Saving those lives was a possibility as close as a pen standing an inch away from an officer responsible for the authorisation of usage of the observation satalites which could be sent in to look at the condition of the shuttle before landing.

[SEXTEE9R]

COME ON NASA, GET UR SHIT TOGETHER WITH THESE CRAPPY MEDIOCRE ROCKETS...

[JIslandProductions]

1:44 Guys! Why I'm seeing two yellow dots fallowing the shuttle? They didn't have HD back then or am I missing something?

[jrockett73]

Entry interface of the atmosphere is world recognized at 62 miles or about 400,000 ft. The shuttle re-entered the atmosphere for every mission exactly where it suppose to with no issues. STS-107 was no different.

[James Christopher Oden]

the thermosphere is located 50-90 MILES ABOVE SEA LEVEL, and is the upper most layer of the earths atmosphere.

[James Christopher Oden]

that is a 20 mile error at a speed of 17,000 MPH re-entered the atmosphere prior to re-entry window.