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I agree with Robert. Same old song and
dance.
---Shaw
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 6:18
PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] OT: Debris
Found In Joshua Tree May Be From Columbia
Hi Ron,
I still think they are way over-stating the
probabilities for
this piece of metal debris. I saw it on the news
last night --
it could honestly be ANYTHING. There are no serial
numbers on
it that I could see, so tracing it to Columbia at this
stage
is nothing more than an uneducated guess.
"The path the
shuttle took on its failed journey home carried it
well north of the
Coachella Valley and the Joshua Tree area, but
officials say it is possible
that debris could have fallen in the
southland."
"Officials" might
say that; I wonder about *engineers*.
"A 4 inch by 4 inch piece of
metal is at the center of all the
attention, and is now believed to be
part of the space shuttle
Columbia."
"Now believed" by whom?
The sheriff? No one from NASA has yet
examined the piece.
>
All this started when Bob Beggs spotted a shiny piece of
> metal in his
driveway Saturday afternoon. "I thought it
> was a piece of trash
that had blown in," he says. But
> after closer inspection, Bob
realized it was much more than
> a piece of trash from the desert. He
says it was hot to the
> touch.
I was in the Mojave desert that
day. It was sunny and warm.
What happens when you put a piece of
metal out in the sun
in the desert? Honestly, the "evidence" here is
hardly worth
mentioning. To summarize, we've got a small,
non-descript
metal frame found in the hot desert sun, hundreds of
kilometers
from Columbia's ground track. This is going to turn out to
be
nothing. And when it does, the same thing will happen
that
always happens: the story will quietly go away, and no one
in
the media will point out how unlikely it was to be a piece
of Columbia in
the first place. Same thing that happens
with
meteorwrongs.
--Rob
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