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‘missing link’

Nation

-,$J NASA inves(igaiors Monday •ćoffered o new interpretndon of the sudden headng ihe shuttle Crtmnbła opcriąpccd on iu left wing and aide as it descended toward im destruction, spcculat-Ing that fatal damagc began else-where on the spaccship.

---They:have-been-3tudying-ihi'

posability that the shutde’s insu-lating tiles had been daraaged as ‘ earJy as the first minutes of the Highc when a piece of foam insu-■^ation appeaied to break off from ‘ the shuttle’s massivc cxtcrnal tank and strike the ur.derside of the left wing near the wheel wdl, wherc Instruments recordcd unusual warming just prior to the •-disaster. At a Iateday briefing in * Houston, shuttle manager Ron "Dittemore also said it is possiblc ■the spaceship was breached some-‘■'.place other than the wheel well ,-whcre the the temperoture inereases were first registered. J^fc said engineers were bafflcd as

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i^:w I ;

Moomara gsthar Mar the •rrtnmc# to th« Johnson Spaco Csnttr Monday In Houston. Moumsrs cum ttimighout tha day to lsav» msmorlals and pay rwpscts to tha mym crtw mambars lost on tha Columbia space shuttla.

to how the observed temperaturo lncreascs‘in the left wheel well and fusclage “end up wlth an cvcnt that lost the vehicle."

The evidcnce leaves engineers ihinking “there*s some other miss-ing link that we don’t havc yet

that’* contribudng to this temperaturę inerease."

That missing link was the sub-jcct of a massivc, nround-the-clock scarch through telemetry reodouts and other recot^s os well as through form*, fields and

lakcs - an effort that promised to go on for wccks or months.

Last night, the Assodated Press reported that searchers had found

_Coliimbia!s.nosŁxone-buried

decp in the ground near the Louisiana border. ;

^MIt’s reosonably intact,” said Warren Zahner, a senior coordi-— nator for-the-Bnvironmcntol Protection Agency, which is over-seeing collecdon of shuttle debris.

NASA Monday set up an addi-tional bose of operations ot Carswell Air Force Bose near Forth Worth to collect the thou-sands of fragments of debris, in addition to one alrcady estab-lished ot the Barkśdale Air Force Base in Louisiana:

Engineers havc been dirccted to considcr the giont cxtemal tank as a possiblc root causo of the accident, Dittcmore said. But they will also continuc to lnvesti-gate a rangę of possiblc al terna-tive causes from inspection proce-dures to wjring and Computer Controls.

Shuttle

Contkwed from Al

As a rcsult, ground controlicrs apparently did not coniider the radical measurcs that might have savcd the astronauts’ livcs - abort-ing the mission soon aft er liftoff or bringing the shuttle in at a reentry angle that could have allowed the cew to parachute to safety.

Aftcr the shuttle disintegrated whilc returning to Earth on Saturday and the damaged tiles emerged as one of the prime on-didates for the cause, NASA engineers began examining their cal-cuhtioRS and wondering whether they had madę a catastrophic mis-takc. lnvestigators have focuscd on the tiles but hnve not ruled out other possible causes of the disas-ter.-

** " While it is easy to condude the engineers were right about the first mission and wrong about the last, what happened this time may _Ą be morę complicatcd: Both dcci-...sions involved judgment and ‘.'.ćhancc, and thosc factors can pn> ■,,'ducc unprcdictable outeomes

when a 178,000-pound spacecraft hurtlcs through the upper atmos-phere at 12S00 mil es per hour.

“This is not the first time that we have had debris generated from the cxternal tank that has struck the underside of the wing." sald Ron Dittemore, NASA*s space shuttle program manager. The thinking was, "this has happened beforo, ycs. it eon impact the tilc; ycs, it could take some of the coating off; yes, it can cven gouge out some of the ule. But it nas never represented anything morę than that."

Film elips taken during liftoff indicatcd a puff bclow the left wing - the readt of what was prób-ably a piece of insulation foam hit-ring lrrPlctures taken during the blinding light of liftoff were impredse in showing the damagc. and engineers were left to guess at what had happened.

The astronauts could not sec the damagc because it was on the bortom of the shuttle. The crew did not havc on-board comeras to sur-

vey the tiJed bottom of the orbiter. NASA hnd spumed an independent advisory panel’s recommen-dation in 1997 that it ercate such a camera for use with every fiight.

A Jan. 17 review of tho film taken at liftoff was followcd by analyses and a mceting of engineers on Jan. 20, Dittemore said in a press briefing Monday. Tcams of engineers discusscd dlffcrent aspeets of risk - the tc-ams earied in sizc from 30 to as fcw as one or two when the qucstiońs became highly specialued. The cnginccr-ing analysis condudcd as eariy as Jan. 22 that the risk was not sen-ous, a dedsion confirmcd ^ finał reriews on Jan. 23 and 24.

Senior NASA officials were briefed Jan. 24 and 27, Dittemore said. Both mectings confirmed the engineers’ conclusion that the spacecraft was not at serious risk.

Since the damagc was under the wing. in an aren not risible to the astronauts, the engineers on the ground madę scveral assump-tions about what had happened.

Like doctors asked to diagnosc the extent of an injury without bcing ablc to actually see it, the engineers started by estimating the sitc of the projectile that hit the wing.

From the puff in film elips when the foam disintegrated into dust on impact with the wing, the engineers calculaced it was probaMy 20 inches long, 16 inchcs wide. 6 inches decp and weighed 2.67 pounds.

The calculations ęrred on the side of caution, Dittemore said, mcaning that the foam probably was smallcr and ligliter.

h’exi, the engineers estimated the angle at which the foam hit tlić wing - and condudcd it was quite Sharp, a glancing blow.

From ihcsc assumptions, the engineers deduccd the impacts of the foam hilting one tilc and a larger arca. Again, this techniąue liad proecd highly reliablc in the past and usually overcstimated the amount of damagc. Dittemore said. •

Poliee find woman slain

in Phil Spector’s home

Authorities arrest legendary record producer

ALHAMBRA, Calif. (AP) - Phil Spector, the legendary record pro- • ducer whose “wali of sound"

hclpcd change thć sound of pop_

“mudc'ln~lhe~1960s, was arrested Monday for allegcdly słiooting o woman to death at his suburbon mansion.    —•

Spector, 62, was seized at the cas-tle-Uke estate around 5 am aftcr somcone in the home called authorities. He was rdcased shon-ly aft er 7 pjn. aftcr posting $1 mil-. lion bond, said Los Angeles County sheriffs Dcputy Rich Pena.

Anomey Robcn Shapiro, whose clients have includcd O.J; Simpson, was representing Spector. “I don't know answrn to any of this," Shapiro said by tele-phone from the Alhambra Police Department before Spector’* relcase.

Authorities did not immediatcly .identify the woman or her rela-tionship to Spector. The victim, found in the foyer, appeared to be in her carly to mid-20s and authorities were trying to locatc her rela-tives, sheriffs Lt. Daniel Rosenberg said. He said depudes had found the murder weapon but relcased no details.

Phil Spector

Arrested In connection with murder

Police orrived aftcr somcone in the home called lo report słiots had been fired, Rosenberg S3id.

“Somcone else was there at the time of the shooling." he said. dcclining to elaboratu. A black Mercedes-Benz sedun with the dri-ver‘s door open was parked in the drieeway of the home. which records show Spector Itmight in 1998 for Sl.l millihn. Authorities towed the car a way Inter in the day.

U.S. soldier gets shot in Germany

BERLIN (AP) - A U S. soldier wq* seriously wounded by gun-firc carly Monday afier hc pulled his car off che road in southem Germany co clcan icc from the windshicld, po lice said.

The 26-ycar-old private first class from che U.S. Army’s Isi Infantry Division was wcarin^ cmlian dotiacs when hc was słwit in che Icfl hond and leg on his way * co che^ barracks in 5chwcinfurt, 60 milcs east of

Frankfurt, Schwcinfurt poliee spokesman Karl-Hcin/ Schmiii said in a siaicmenc.

Police said chey were focus&m: on a personal motive_% afier lx>ih German investigacors and U.S. mililary officials said there were no indications crf a terror aitack.

“It looks like a crimina! aci,^H poliee spokesman Dieter Klein said. ^MWc're tetirfing to look aL (the soldicr's) |>crsonal relation-shi ps."

Families

•i

CwrtJrtoed from Al _t_ship he-would travel on. Evcn if hc —hod time. Gary Snów isn*t surę

, what he would havc toidhisson._

„ "What do you say to Kim? 'Kccp ₁yburhead Iow?”

..Not all the soldicrs in the ' Pcrsian Gulf are cut off from their parents. Kirk Weincrt. a full-time Idaho National Guardsman, sends 'e-mail from Kuwait to his faihcr,

' Ron Weincrt, in Buhl. Weincrt has . been in Kuwait long cnough to find a way to communicate, but he ćan*t say exacdy what hc’s doing for security reasons.

Some soldiers stop shon of giv-ing their family all the dctails to -protcct them. Capy Snow’s son in the Navy, Kcvin Cilley, told his •-'ptarents he was in Spain, when he ' Was actually in Kuwait, becausc ^: he knew his motłier would be wor-" ried if she knew he was in the •Middle East.

-    Parents and crandparcnts said •• havring thetr cłuldrcn in the mili-■ fary and in harm’s way affects •’their poliócal views on the poten-•'tial war.

■** -‘“rm not such a hawk that I used ^:,1o be," Gnry Snów said. “But 1 'kr.ow that dus needs to be donc."

"Of course I hate to sec us going ^; tb war, but it may be a neccssary . evil, too,” Lila Wntson said. “We *'cftn’t sit herc and just let the ■•enemy take us ovcr.”

••fcf «It’s scary, ni tell you that right' •*-htrw. WeYe conccmed, but not the śpbint that Td go over the hill and ^: 'Sfcy. Don’t go,’*’ Myron Schroeder ‘ óf Twin Falls said. Schroeder’s •'igrandson is hehded for the

-    Persian Gulf, and his granddaugh-ter-in-law reccntly retumed from Quatar.

Families don‘t like the idea of their children fighting. At the same time, they say the men and . womtn are on an honorable mis-. sioa

Nels Molier looks at the situa-

he's the one most responsible for my son’s deoth - but I don*t like the way (hc administration is han-dling things," Molier said.

The biggest unanswered qucs-tion, Molier said. is: What happens aftcr the war? There is still no exit strategy.

Kirk and Ron Weincrt have dif-fering opinions about war in lraq.

“Watching all the blecding hearts in the States on the news raakes most of usTcaily mnd," Kirk Weincrt wrotc in an e-mail to The Timcs-Ncurs. “The thing to rcmember is that we are here so that all of you can rest cas>- and not worry about another Sept. 11. It gets pretty discouraging, hear-ing all the and-war sentiment. We

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need to htwe the suppon of our families iricmls and Uie public in generał."

—t‘Not being in fm-or of thc-wat—| shouldn't he interpreted as not supporting .the troops," Ron Weincrt said. "The reasons for war havc not been dcady madę, and 1 liope we can avoid it."

Caleb Jones of Twin Falls decid-ed to join the Anny in Deccmbcr as the threat of confiia grew. He wanted to jałn his twin. Chad Jones, a Marinę.

"I felt if hc was in there doing that wltole gig. I at least wanted to be in there with him," Caleb Jones said.

Caleb Jones said he is not wor-ried about war. "I don’t think

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