National Tragedy, Local Interest

It seems that an Air Force telescope at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque recorded some footage of the last flight of the Columbia (including about one second that nobody else recorded), which may be useful in figuring out exactly what happened. They're also saying that there may be shuttle debris to be found in New Mexico, but it passed considerably north of here, so I guess I'm not exactly likely to trip over any of it.

There seems to be a lot of speculation now that perhaps the shuttle may have been hit by piece of space debris. Jay Manifold of A Voyage to Arcturus (where I got all these links from) has a good analysis of the odds of that happening.