Practicalmadness

News outlets are reporting that the shuttle Columbia lost contact with NASA controllers and is now believed to have broken apart on its final descent. There were seven astronauts aboard, including one Israeli fighter pilot serving as a payload specialist.

There has been no formal announcement that the crew is dead; however, flags are flying at half mast at NASA's Johnson Space Center and at the White House, and there are apocryphal reports of torsos and arms falling from the sky over Houston.

"We're greatly concerned,'' a NASA spokesman, John Ira Petty, said in an interview on CBS.

This was the 28th flight of the Columbia, NASA's oldest shuttle, over the 22 years of the shuttle program. (The remaining two, Discovery and Endeavour, were launched after the 1987 Challenger disaster.) NBC reports that although Columbia was older than most American cars still on the road, NASA had steadily retrofitted Columbia and that it was considered up to date.

At this juncture, the White House believes that this was an accident.

Web reports:

» The New York Times
» Dave Winer has a National Weather Service radar image of the crash
» CNN
» CNET News.com
» CBS News: No hint of terrorism in shuttle tragedy