From: "Geo." 

"Joe Barr"  wrote in message
news:3e3e948a$1{at}w3.nls.net...

> 200 miles away and 39 miles high, I stared at death happening and hadn't
> even known it.  Hadn't even remembered the early morning a couple of years
> ago when I had gotten up early to watch it streak through the same sky
> towards a landing in Florida.  Sometimes ignorance is my friend.

I wasn't close enough to see it live but I had a weird experience too. My
wife woke me up as she was leaving for work about 7:40am so I ended up
sitting at my laptop with the TV on once she had gone and for some reason
had put CNN on. I was just sort of half paying attention when I realized
they were covering the shuttle landing and on the screen was a tiny very
faint dot of the shuttle as it had just been spotted. Cool, I never get to
see these anymore.

Still half watching I looked up a moment later and saw a different shot,
and I remember thinking "man that thing is bright, they're really
coming in hot this time" and I noticed the trail behind it which I had
never seen on TV before. I then noticed the trail suddenly got wide and
then narrow again and I was thinking "what the heck?" because
something about that just looked wrong to me. It was right then it broke
up.

The only way I can describe that moment is that it was the exact moment of
realization like when the second plane hit the towers. I wasn't thinking it
was terrorism but I was realizing what had just happened. I don't know how
long I just stared at the TV but when I finally tore my eyes away from it
was when I posted to the barktopus group here starting the shuttle thread.
That short post and a couple of quick ICQ messages was about all I got out
before I became focused on the TV again.

I do have a question for you. One thing I couldn't get a feeling for is how
fast it was moving. Can you describe how quickly or slowly it was crossing
the sky? Maybe compare it to a jet or something?

Geo.

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