[lifesaver]

I got a voice mail from my sister who lives in Houston. She is a speech thearpist at a school district there. She was going into work this am to help with soem adittional testing backlog that needed to be taken care of. She was on her way to work and saw what she thought was a metorite or space junk streaking across the sky. She didnt think it was the shuttle for several reasons; 1) She didnt know it was up. 2) We see the shuttle reenterign the earths atmosphere over texas a few times a year. You can see it almost anywhere in texas. At 300,000 to 200,000 ft in altitude its visible to most parts of Texas if the sky conditions are right. The meterologists on tv will often tell us when and where to look if we want to see it. So weve seen it several tiems before now. She said this didnt look anything like the other reentries. This one was different, with a wide smoke plume and "sparkely things" coming off it, leaving its own contrails. Thats why she didnt think it was the shuttle. Wild.

I absolutely hate days like this. Its one of those days of national tragedy that you will remember EXACTLY what you were doing and where you were when you heard the news for the rest of your life. I remember where I was and what I was doing when the Challenger exploded, When the Murrah bldg was bombed in 95, and when the WTC was bombed in 93 and of course the attacks of 911. Man I hate days like this. I feel bad for the families, but also for the people who work on the shuttle program. THe pride and effort those people put into it is amazing and to be at home thinking, "Did I cause this? Am I responsibe for the death of these 7 astronauts? Did I check and double check everyhting? Is there anything adittional I could have done? Should I have gone back and checked x, y, or z a fourth time, a fifth?" Damyn.

Also they are way serious about the pieces of the orbiter. Not only are the pieces potentially very dangerous as has been described above, but I am sure EVERYTHING is absolutely necessary to reconstuct the orbiter for failure analysys. I know they are serious because I have weatherbug on my computer here at work. It displays the temp down in the system tray and flashes if there is a storm warning or flood warning or something. Well I was working this early afternoon, and it starts flashing, meaning an alert is up for my area. I click on it and the following pops up:

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
CIVIL EMERGENCY MESSAGE
TEXAS DIVISION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AUSTIN TX
RELAYED BY NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX
107 PM CST SAT FEB 1 2003

THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS TRANSMITTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE TEXAS
DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY.

...SPACE SHUTTLE DEBRIS...

CITIZENS SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM SPACE SHUTTLE DEBRIS AND REPORT
LOCATION OF DEBRIS TO LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
AGAIN...CITIZENS SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM SPACE SHUTTLE DEBRIS.

SO I guess that means they are serious.

I pray for the space shuttle crew's family. I cant imagine havign to experience a private tragedy so publically.