When Columbia broke up, how far away could you hear/feel it?

What you felt was not the brake up itself, the shuttle was still coming in at Mach 5 so even as it did brake up the sconic boom was still being made. Every time a shuttle lands at Edwards AFB the whole of S.Calif. in and around L.A. hears and feels the double boom of it passing overhead. I get to go out and watch it come in as it flys right over the trailer park I live in on the last circle it makes on it's way to the runway for landing.

I can't answer your question with regard to being that far away, but can give you something to compare it to.

When the shuttle comes home and passes over central Texas, which it did a few times before the Columbia accident, you can clearly hear the double sonic boom 2 minutes after it passes directly overhead. The noise level is what I'd compare to a hunting rifle or thunder a long ways off. Not loud, but noticable. On the day Columbia broke up, I was in central Texas 95 miles SSW of the nearest ground track point. I heard at least 5 pairs of sonic booms in close succession, and the sound level was very similar to the normal landings in the past. I saw it go from one bright object to a lot of bright objects. Me and several friends got up early specifically to watch the pass.

The shuttle was about 50 miles up over Dallas as it was breaking up. In rough numbers and considering the elevation angle, you were about 450 miles from it, and I was about 107 miles from it. 450 miles seems like a long way for you to hear it, much less get a house shake from it. Maybe.

Consider also that it was at least 15 minutes before any video got on TV anywhere. The event happened at about 8:04am. Landing was scheduled for

8:20am central time. It was 8:18am before the AM news radio station in Dallas which was live at KSC announced that the shuttle was missing. So if you saw anything on TV and saw it less than 15 minutes after you felt it, it probably wasn't the shuttle.

Do you happen to remember the time?

Unknown to most of the public, the days of radio blackouts are over. The shuttle communicates with the ground via a satillite link (there is a hole in the plasma cloud behind the shuttle, where it can send radio transmissions) for the entire reentry, so the exact time communications were lost should be available if you look for it.

You probobly heard the sonic bombs, though perhaps more of them from the individual fragments, rather than the breakup itself. Its rather like a rocket shredding in flight, there is no explosion, just aerodynamic forces tearing the rocket/spacecraft apart.

More like Mach 17 or 18 when the breakup occured.

Back to the original question: it's certainly possible that you heard the sonic booms of reentry, which you would have heard if the shuttle had or had not broken up. The eruption of Krakatoa was heard over

3,000 miles away in 1883.

Dave

It was probably not within 15 minutes when we saw it on TV, we would have been making coffee, and moving slow, so wouldn't turn on the TV right away. And I don't know if they had video right away, I seem to remember one of those early news stories being something like, NASA lost contact with the Shuttle a short time ago. It's interesting that we never heard the sonic booms before when there was a Florida landing. You always hear that there are two booms, but being in the Central Midwest you never expect to experience them. I would think that if it was always heard in this area someone would mention it. That makes me think that the booms were louder or something due to the breakup.

Bob

Hank wrote: