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Fortsetzung von Teil4

Myth - Nostradamus predicted the Columbia accident

Would you believe that soothsayer and prophet Nostradamus predicted the Columbia accident hundreds of years ago? There was an Internet message floating around shortly after the accident (always a standard for high credibility) that read -

In the mission of the first blue star,
a child of the holy land among the seven shall perish,
as the ship descends heavens sky,
the lone star be scattered with wreckage.

 

It got everything right and "lone star" can be interpreted as either Ilan Ramon (for the Star of David) or the Lonestar state of Texas. But this "verse" is actually a fake created just after the accident by somebody with a very sick sense of humor.

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Myth - Ilan Ramon broadcasted video of the cracked wing

Israeli television station "Erev Hadash" stated that Ilan Ramon had shown Prime Minister Ariel Sharon views of the shuttle's wing with cracks in it during their interview over a week before the accident!.

The images were actually slightly out-of-focus payload bay blankets in the forward part of the shuttle's cargo bay which were transmitted from Columbia the day before the interview. What looks like cracks are the natural folds in the payload bay blankets.

Note the black cylinder in the image, part of the latch which closes the shuttle's cargo bay doors.

For comparison look at the photo of Mike Anderson and Dave Brown taken several months before the launch when they inspected Columbia's cargo bay. Brown is staring at that black connector because one of the few spacewalking tasks Anderson and Brown were trained to do was to close the cargo bay doors manually if there was a problem with the mechanism.