Well, one little trick I learned from the natives from living in China is to see what's being denied the most vehemently. If, over the next few days, they keep saying "It's not a missle, it's not a missle", then you KNOW it's a fuckin missle. (It worked a little differently in China...if they thought Deng Xiao Peng and whoever was having a lot of political friction, they'd wait to see if there were lots of pictures in the papers of those two guys shaking hands. Then they'd know the rumors were confirmed.) Another sign to look for is the "doublethink" sign...if some theory is being discussed that seems pretty important but then a few days later there's absolutely no more mention of it, then that's a real good candidate for the truth. -TD

From: Thomas Shaddack <shaddack@ns.arachne.cz> To: <cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com> Subject: Re: Shuttle Diplomacy Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 03:59:13 +0100 (CET)

...

One of the current theories floating around has to do with a piece of debris that flew off the booster rocket during take-off and collided with the left wing (where the problems began). The video of the take-off was reviewed in great detail and it was determined that it was innocent, considering the proximity of the problems and the debris there appears to be at least something worth investigating.

According to Slashdot, the ground control started to lose data from shuttle's sensors; first from the back of the left wing, then spreading forward, then all the shuttle went dead. Sounds like a structural damage. The takeoff damage could've been a contributing factor; one single slightly loosened tile can be deadly in such speeds.

I just hope they won't mothball the ISS...

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