page report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) released this Tuesday (Volume I of six volumes), although the former probably is more descriptive of what the report actually represents. The author, or authors, of the report should probably be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in the fiction category.

Volume I is divided into four parts and eleven chapters. They are, in order; The Accident (Part One), Why the accident occurred (Part Two), A look ahead (Part Three) and Appendices (Part Four).

The report is prefaced with a Board Statement, an Executive Summary and a Report Synopsis This critique will deal only with Chapters 2 and 3 that purport to present a factual account of events and findings involving the launch of the Columbia on January sixteenth and its reentry into the earth's atmosphere on February first. Much space is devoted in other chapters to how NASA's "culture" contributed the disaster.

Volumes II through VI are more appendices of documents and transcripts of the board's public hearings (although not of the over 200 sessions of secret testimony to which only selected members of Congress will be privy).

In Chapter 3 (Accident Analysis) the board states unequivocally and without qualification that the physical cause of the accident was a piece of insulating foam from the external tank striking the wing shortly into the launch causing damage that allowed superheated air to penetrate the leading-edge insulation of the wing on reentry progressively melting the aluminum structure of the wing resulting in aerodynamic forces that ultimately destroyed the craft.

As with many government documents, the devil is in the details. We shall examine the evidence presented that is supposed to support the conclusion. Most of the debunking information in this article comes from the report itself. The balance is from CAIB press releases or statements made at press conferences by board spokespersons.

First, there is credible evidence what came into contact with the wing on launch was not foam. The insulating foam on the tank is orange in color. Some engineers, including Shuttle Manager Ron Dittemore, noted in viewing the only visual evidence they had of the liftoff that the material was white, not orange. Several engineers thought the material was a thin veneer of ice that would have dissipated into a cloud of vapor on contact with the wing. This is exactly what the video shows as the material disappears behind the wing and a white vapor-like cloud appears below the wing.

NASA was hampered in its review of the launch by the poor quality of visual evidence. The two films used were from a 35 mm camera located 17 miles from the launch and a video camera 26 miles away. Both cameras were out of focus (a condition that had been present in earlier launches). The report acknowledges the visuals were so poor that the shape of the piece of (white) material could not be determined.

Some orange material was found near the launch site by a park ranger who described it as foam. At first an unidentified NASA official denied it was from the shuttle saying it was part of a boat. When asked by a local TV reporter to produce the material, the story changed and it was admitted the material had been sent to NASA's external tank examiners for examination. The reporter was told he would receive a report the following day. He is still waiting

.

The report uses five and a half pages to describe technical specifications of the insulating foam, how it is mixed (the foam is a combination of two chemicals) and how it is applied to the external tank (a combination of spraying and hand application). Not once is the color of the foam mentioned.

The board ran about 130 tests (called transport analysis) firing pieces of (white) foam into various materials including a $1 million mockup of Columbia's left wing trying to obtain damage consistent with that required by their theory. On the seventh try on the wing mockup, the hurtling foam blasted a 16-inch by 16-inch hole in the wing. Board member Scott Hubbard, who supervised the testing said, "We have found the smoking gun." That phrase was spread across newspapers and TV news across the land.

However, there are a couple of problems with the test. First, there was no shower of fine foam debris as the board had postulated (instead of the vapor-like cloud observed in the real instance). The foam ricocheted off the wing virtually intact.

The second problem is the imprecision of the test itself. Assumptions used, as outlined in the report were; "the computed airflow around the Shuttle stack when the foam was shed, the estimated aerodynamic characteristics of the foam, the image analysis team's trajectory estimates, and the size and shape of the bipod ramp."

Some might call that guessing at or even manufacturing a scenario, particularly since the report concedes, "The undetermined and yet certainly irregular shape of the foam introduced substantial uncertainty about its estimated aerodynamic characteristics."

Nevertheless, CAIB and NASA spokespersons continue to dogmatically state, without qualification, that foam hitting the wing during the launch was the ultimate cause of the disaster and the media slavishly repeats it.

The board's scenario for the sequence of events when the Columbia reentered the earth's atmosphere is even more conflicted than its launch fantasy. At some point in time the board realized it reentry scenario had to be consistent with damage to the left wing during lift-off, but not before NASA and the board itself had released information that had to be spun or ignored. In the interest of shortening this already too long article, only a couple of the more egregious examples will be presented.

If prior damage to the wing had allowed superheated air (plasma) to get past its outer layer of heat resistant tiles, the heat sensors under the tiles would show gradual increases in temperature until the melting point of various metals was reached or the sensors themselves were destroyed.

After at least fifteen revisions of the time line showing temperatures at various points in the route of the shuttle, the gradual increase in temperatures (e.g. an increase of 50 to 60 degrees over five minutes) was portrayed. The report included detailed analysis of four sensors near the area the board had "estimated" the damage occurred, complete with graphs.

In a weekly news conference reported on April 15th, the CAIB announced a revised estimate of the spot of damage based in part on sensor readings from a salvaged data recorder. It had recorded a temperature spike about eight minutes after Columbia entered the atmosphere (at the same time a digital photograph and at least two video cameras had captured an apparent external strike of energy on the shuttle). The only reference in the report to this photographic evidence is to concede debris started falling from the shuttle earlier than originally thought.

Admiral Harold Gehman, Chairman of the CAIB, cited a sensor reading from the new location saying, "This baby went up 350 degrees in about two seconds" (hardly a gradual increase). Another sensor spiked from a normal reading of 600 degrees to 1200 degrees. We don't have to worry about the media reminding Gehman, or the public, of these pronouncements. They have already been dumped in the memory hole.

Further evidence of an extraordinary event was found in parts recovered from the shuttle. An actuator made of stainless steel had a hole burned through it that could not have been caused by the hot plasma, which flows like water over surfaces.

Paul A. Czysz, an emeritus professor at Parks College of Engineering and Aviation at St. Louis University in Missouri and a long-time consultant to NASA said," Boy, to have that thing cut through the actuator, that's tough. They are steel and they are built to be pretty tough. So it had to be a very, very high-temperature jet cutting through that portion of the craft." He likened it to a welder's torch where the spot directly under the torch melts and the rest gets hot but doesn't melt.

The board realized it needed to show how plasma could have melted the stainless steel and create the hole observed in the recovered debris along with the splashes of molten metal (which had re-solidified) surrounding the hole. Did they flow superheated air (plasma) over steel in a test chamber? No! They used a blowtorch and then announced the plasma could have been responsible.

When the composition of the CAIB was announced the day after the Feb. 1st disaster, it was stacked with high-ranking military brass that had responsibility for either research and development or actual command responsibilities for directed energy weapons, i.e. electromagnetic pulse (EMP). This, in part, led this author to title his first article on the subject, "Columbia - Accident or Shootdown?"

However, if the report is to be believed (a big if), the offices of the board members were decided before the accident and those named to the board are merely the current occupants stationed in them.

If true, this raises an interesting question. Was the Columbia involved in some kind of military testing of directed energy weapons? It is unlikely that any event in the shuttle could have caused the disaster. All physical and photographic evidence points to an external strike of some form of directed energy on the shuttle.

The overall tone of the CAIB report may result in Congress killing the NASA manned space program. This would not displease the military which has made no secret of its desire to be in absolute control of inner space.

In order to gain a full appreciation of the disingenuousness and deceit of the CAIB investigation and report, the reader should review this writer's previous articles on the subject. The title's are (in chronological order):

Columbia - Accident or Shootdown

Columbia Investigation Controversies

Shuttle Probe - What They are Hiding

The articles can be accessed at

www.worldnewsstand.net/MediumRare/Archives.htm

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

Permission is granted to reproduce this article in its entirety.

The author is a freelance writer based in Romulus, Michigan. He is a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, a retired customs administrator and accountant, and a student of history and the U.S. Constitution.

If you would like to receive Medium Rare articles directly, please contact the author at jimrarey@comcast.net.

.:Story forwarded by:.

Bill Dash

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