Sixteen Minutes from Home: The Columbia Space Shuttle Tragedy

If you like space you will like this book. Period. Reading some of the negative reviews I wonder what they expected. Yeah the author cracked out a book after the tragic event happened. That's exploitation?!? Well if it didn't happen we wouldn't have a subject for a book?!? Hey I BOUGHT the book. Does that make me bad too?!? As for the TV commentator errors...by and large TV talking heads reading the news are morons that don't know a comet from a colon. They read badly written material created by people that failed natural science and math. Then they make stupid comments about things they don't understand. I love the space program, private, American, Russian, Japanese, whatever and I really really wish the pinheads on TV would try a little harder to get it right. Thanks Mark Cantrell for mentioning this. As for the patriotism, rationalism etc. in it. Hey what's "rational" about strapping yourself onto a huge pile of TNT and lighting it off so you can go into space. You do it for lots of reasons. "Rational" is we stay at home and count beans. Screw rational. I've been watching space shots since Apollo and I still get choked up when those babies take off. And yeah I cheer for the good old USA whenever it's one of ours and for the next guy when it's one of theirs. We DO lead the world in space. I can pick nits with NASA and their out-dated shuttle all day. But old and worn out as the fleet may be, it's still a huge jump ahead of the rest of the planet. Great Book. Covers all the details of the event. Moreover, Mr Cantrell reached the right conclusion as to the reason before NASA released it to the public. Pretty smart.

The Shuttle Columbia ( STS-107) was on its way back to florida when it exploded over texas. It killed its 7 astronauts. The are:1.Michael Anderson2.Kalpana Chawla3.Laurel Clark4.David Brown5.Rick Husband6.Ilan Ramon7.Willaim MacoolThis book expalins all about the disaster. It was caused by a foam that hit the left wing on launch. The foam came from the External Fuel Tannk.

Wonderful insightful book , that is very hard toput down a must have for the nasa collector!