SHUTTLE
PERSUASION:
We Are Being Toyed With

By Barry Chamish
GuluFuture.com
February 10, 2003

PAGE URL
http://www.gulufuture.com/future/shuttle_persuasion.htm

YESTERDAY, I was sent a photo of what was purported to be the electric charge that struck Columbia. After seeing the weird blue looped streak I was all prepared to say,

"Case closed. We know what damaged the craft's left wing and caused the crash seven minutes later. Now I can concentrate on my Israeli reports like I was born to do."

I was all ready to prepare a jpg of the streak and send it out. But then I noticed there were clouds, lots of them, above the supposed Columbia: at 212000 feet, a sky full of clouds. This picture was a hoax. That led me to the next step in logical thinking: this is all too easy. An electric discharge is photographed bolting into Columbus. Proof quickly arrives that electric storms occur in the high atmosphere. Mystery solved. Let's bury the astronauts and go home.

Such an approach is a good idea if you're covering up facts, considering more and more influential people want to know if the blue light was caused by a Star Wars Weapon:

>>> Dallas Congressman, Pete Sessions(R-Dallas), and son for former FBI Director Judge William Sessions, told KLIF-AM talk radio, on Saturday morning, that these electrical flashes are very disturbing. He speculated that America's enemies, citing China, had developed SDI weapons. (Was this an assassination contracted by Iraq to the ChiComms?)

>>> Congressman Pete Sessions, Republican-Northwest Dallas, and son of former FBI Director William Sessions (of San Antonio), has called for an investigation of the mysterious flashes of light seen just before the Columbia accident.

TO PREVENT such calls for a real investigation, the strategy is; let us quickly prepare data that will lead all to one inescapable conclusion; a storm in an unknown part of the high atmosphere released a bolt of lightning which damaged the Shuttle's left wing and caused it to break up and crash. Or, as we shall conjecture shortly, let's have it prepared before the disaster:

Here are some reports from Feb.5-7:

>>> An Air Force tracking camera in New Mexico that photographed the final minute of flight by the space shuttle Columbia showed "heavy structural damage on the left wing near the fuselage," a source familiar with the investigation of the disaster told NBC News on Friday.

>>> "Cosmic bolt" probed in shuttle disaster
Scientists poring over 'infrasonic' sound waves http://www.sfgate.com
Federal scientists are looking for evidence that a bolt of electricity in the upper atmosphere might have doomed the space shuttle Columbia as it streaked over California, The Chronicle has learned. Investigators are combing records from a network of ultra-sensitive instruments that might have detected a faint thunderclap in the upper atmosphere at the same time a photograph taken by a San Francisco astronomer appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning striking the shuttle. Should the photo turn out to be an authentic image of an electrical event on Columbia, it would not only change the focus of the crash investigation, but it could open a door on a new realm of science. "We're working hard on the data set. We have an obligation," said Alfred Bedard, a scientist at the federal Environmental Technology Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. He said the lab was providing the data to NASA but that it was too early to draw any conclusions from the sounds of the shuttle re-entry. The lab has been listening to the sounds of ghostly electromagnetic phenomena in the upper atmosphere, dubbed sprites, blue jets and elves. For some time, scientists have speculated on whether these events could endanger airliners or returning spacecraft.

A study conducted 10 years ago for NASA found that there is a 1-in-100 chance that a space shuttle could fly through a sprite, although it concluded that the consequences of such an event were unclear. And in 1989, an upper- atmospheric electrical strike "shot down" a high-altitude NASA balloon 129,000 feet over Dallas.

>>> From USA Today:
Nothing but a rocket can fly at its upper limit of 53 miles. The "ignorosphere" encompasses the mesosphere and upper stratosphere. Invisible clouds, strange electrical flashes called red sprites and blue lightning bolts that strike upward from the tops of clouds inhabit the thin air. This is the place where falling stars are made. The "ignorosphere" earns its nickname from the fact that you can't get there from here without a rocket. It is too high for weather balloons and too low for satellites to dip down to gather information. Much of what is known about the upper atmosphere comes from measurements collected during more than 100 re-entries by space shuttles since the first launch of the Columbia in 1981.

What is perhaps least known about the mesosphere is how to fly in it. This may be a missing links in the Columbia mystery. Scientists say that one of the big unknowns is the behavior of airflow over the shuttle as it streaks downward into the thinnest of thin air at speeds of 17,000 to 14,000 miles per hour. Xiaolin Zhong, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA is studying the airflow problem for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Space shuttles can experience unpredictable airflow problems on the wings for a variety of reasons: the wrong trajectory, unknown atmospheric conditions or any roughness on the shuttle's surface. These problems are known to cause intense heating, which is a focus of NASA's investigation. Understanding these airflow problems is one of the top priorities of the Air Force, which is planning to build its own space plane and upper atmosphere aircraft.

"Part of my work is on disturbances" in airflow that can potentially burn up a shuttle, says Zhong. "This is still more art than science." Zhong says this problem was one of four major reasons cited a decade ago for canceling the National Aerospace Plane, which was supposed to replace the shuttle.

As NASA proceeds with its investigation, scientists will have to ponder the many mysteries of the "ignorosphere." A report by NASA scientists released last fall describes concerns about the impact of upper atmospheric phenomenon on the space shuttle:

Transparent clouds, called "noctilucent" clouds, float 50 miles above Earth and are visible only at twilight. These silvery cirrus clouds form at the edges of much larger clouds. Models of shuttle impacts with them "vary from trivial to catastrophic" according to the report, which says "the most severe effect of entry through a noctilucent cloud would probably be the erosion of the thermal protection system during the most critical heating region." That critical heating region is where Columbia was destroyed. The agency plans its re-entry paths to avoid regions thought prone to these clouds.
Red sprites are electrical discharges in the upper atmosphere. They occur over thunderclouds and have been considered to pose less than a one in 100 risk to the shuttle. Some rainstorm clouds did appear over Northern California during re-entry last Saturday but no lightning was reported on the ground, says atmospheric scientist Walter Lyons, of FMA Research Inc. in Fort Collins, Colo.

Density shears are patches of thicker-than-expected air that can increase the shuttle's roll and pull on one wing. On a Columbia mission in 1992 and an Endeavor mission in 1993, hitting such patches forced them to use up its fuel for the thrusters that help keep it on course during re-entry. Blue jets are upward lightning strikes. In 1998, Lyons and a team of scientists reported one that was sparked by a meteor. "The safety implications are just a gaping hole in our knowledge," he says. As the space shuttle streaks through the upper atmosphere, it leaves a wake in the air just as a boat leaves a wake behind it in the water. The shuttle's wake becomes electrified. Lyons says some scientists are speculating that its electrified wake acted as an antenna and drew a blue jet to the Columbia.

NASA and the Air Force have been losing interest in studying the uppermost atmosphere. Meanwhile, Lyons says scientists are still discovering unexplained phenomenon. "We're nickel-and-diming to do our research," he says. "And there is all sorts of electrical foolishness going on up there that we still don't know anything about."

SO WHAT is it about that last report that is so bothersome? It's when NASA began its investigation; less than two months before Columbia took off. This is known as establishing an alibi.

The next reporter implies that NASA's plan to shut down the Shuttle program and its release of the ignorosphere report just prior to the loss of the Columbia was not accidental:

>>> To: Breaking News
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 1:38 AM
Subject: Earth Changes TV/Breaking News -
NASA Looking To Shut Down Space Station & Shuttle
02/05/03 by Mitch Battros (ECTV)

Now lets see if we can objectively put this puzzle together.

SO AFTER forty years in space, when not even one little red sprite has ever hit, let alone felled, a spacecraft, the one that does, emerges not two months after NASA announced the danger it posed.

There exists the real possibility that we are being toyed with. And the sophisticated manipulations are going to work. Very shortly, the world will put the Shuttle tragedy to bed, fully persuaded that the craft was brought down by a freak high upper atmosphere electrical discharge. And that will be that.

But there is more, much more to the downing of Space Shuttle Columbia. And the memories of Ilan Ramon and his brave crewmates will never find peace.
end

Barring the unexpected, we end the Shuttle period and return to Israel next sendout.

BOOK plug:
My new book is being opened and vandalized by postal authorities everywhere.
From Edmonton: "My books haven't arrived and Cora's were delivered opened...again."
From Reno: "Book arrived today, can't wait to read it. However, cover was barely on, torn, and held together by a big rubber band. Return address not clear, where do I send your $25 to cover book cost/shipping???"

If you'd like to risk ordering Save Israel, write chamish@netvision.net.il

The most open-minded coverage of the Shuttle disaster is found at:
http://pageonenews.com (Ref To GuluFuture Articles There<Blush> Ed.)
http://InvestigativeJournal.com
http://www.rumormillnews.com/
end postscript