I live on the northern edge of the debris field. I have really enjoyed this group but have never had much to contribute. From my observations, I know at least some of the tiles or some other parts where smashed to little grit-sized/dust-sized pieces before hitting the ground. Most of grit-sized/small gravel-sized pieces hit the ground within the first hour after the accident. The dust-sized pieces stayed aloft for much of the day. I heard the shuttle as it was breaking apart at 8:00am CST. The surface windspeed was about 20-30 knots from the South at that time. I was inside the house at the time. Sometime from about 8:15am to 8:30am my wife and I heard a noise that sounded like rain on the roof of the house for a short period of time. At sometime between 8:30-8:45am, I went outside for the first time that morning. The air at that time had a burnt odor. Also, sometime during this timeframe 8:00am-9:00am I lost the satellite signal from Dishnetwork for about 5-10 minutes. The largest piece of debris found near my home (about 2 miles away) was about 12" in diameter and it was metallic as is most of the debris that has been recovered. The dust cloud from the accident was trackable by our local weather radar for most of the day. Tim ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harald Edens" <edens@weather-photography.com> To: <SeeSat-L@satobs.org> Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 10:59 AM Subject: RE: Normal Shuttle Reentry > At 07:38 2003-02-03 -0800, you wrote: > >On another subject.. I was very skeptical of the attorney interviewed on CNN > >who had a piece of debris hit his but now can't find it. The piece was big > >enough to put a 1 sq ft hole completely through the roof and tear off > >shingles another foot or two around the hole but seems to have disappeared > >into dust, he says he searched extensively but can't find a trace of > >anything.... hmmm > >Dale > > Yes that's suspicious... but might be true. I have heard of no-one finding > any tiles, actually. These things are so brittle that I think they get > smashed to very little pieces at impact with the ground over 100 mph. The > places where they do remain in one piece are probably over water and soft > ground (woods?) where they can remain unnoticed longer. If such a tile > strikes a house or a road there may not be much left of it. But yes, it > would be strange that nothing was found at all, not even small pieces. > Harald > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' > in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org > http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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