Ep 309: The Columbia’s last flight

By thelabwithbradbarton | July 22, 2021

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The Columbia’s last flight

17 years after the space shuttle Challenger broke up during launch, the space shuttle Columbia broke up during reentry. We take a look at what happened and why.

Here’s an article about the crawler transporter.

Driving one of the world’s largest vehicles

Here’s a video about the crawler transporter.

Space Shuttle Era: Crawler Transporter

And another video about the crawler.

Explore Kennedy Space Center: Crawler

And another article about the crawler.

The Crawlers

Here’s a NASA sight about the space shuttle external fuel tank.

NASA – The External Tank

Here’s some news footage about the Columbia disaster, before the news people knew for certain what had happened to the shuttle.

Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy

Here’s some more news coverage of the Columbia disaster, when the news people had a much better idea of what had happened.

Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster

And here’s an article suggesting the private company era of space exploration began with the Columbia disaster.

How the NASA tragedy began the private space age of SpaceX and Blue Origin