DED Culprit in Orbiter Breakup

by Plautus

Is this ( http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/coil.html ) "purple beam" part of a missile defense system?

DED's Starfire project: "weapons, astronautics and geophysics" - ( http://www.federallabs.org/servlet/FLCLPRODisplayServlet?wLPROID=1015 ) Federal Laboratory Consortium -

"The Air Force/AFRL-Directed Energy Directorate is one of four AF "Super Labs." It was created in December 1990 through reorganization of three previously independent laboratories (Weapons, Astronautics and Geophysics)...involved in developing...directed-energy weapons." - December, 1990

( http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/ )The Directed Energy Directorate has been pursuing the goal of an ( http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/Factsheets/AirborneLaser.html ) airborne laser that can acquire, target and shoot down a ballistic missile (or any missile) in the boost phase. In 1999 they announced they had a ( http://www.af.mil/news/Sep1999/n19990907_991642.html ) technique of deforming laser beams to keep them coherent in the atmosphere.

This method uses a ( http://www.sor.plk.af.mil/Photos/images/CO2Laser.jpg ) laser "sight" that fires a laser into the ionosphere to excite molecules there, they create a ( http://ephemeris.sjaa.net/0210/EphOct02.pdf ) "false star" and then collect the light from it using a ( http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/35meter.html ) telescope. They use the light from this star to derive the refractive properties of the intervening air and to rapidly deform the ( http://www.snwonline.com/case_studies/air_force_12-09-02.asp?article_id=183 ) dynamic optics propagating the ( http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/coil.html ) laser up to eight thousand times per second, to literally guide the light around the air molecules.

The following report of a purple beam tracking a moving aircraft at night was reported September 17, 2002, four and a half months before the NASA orbiter broke up over the ( http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/factsheets/coil.html ) Starfire Optical Range. It describes a beam of energy that looked like lightning but completely linear in direction, stretching from a fixed point on the ground to a moving aircraft.

"Purple lightning" tracks aircraft over Oregon - ( http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/025/S25126.html ) NUFORC - "...what appeared to be a blue/purple beam, which was wavy in shape, but completely linear in direction. This beam had the appearance of a thin streak of lightning, yet was relatively dim. The beam was very clearly connected to the ground...following the beams upward trajectory, I spotted an aircraft flying..." - September, 2002

( http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/Factsheets/SOR.html ) Starfire's coelostat beam director has a one-meter aperature. This is around twice the size of similar "high-end" devices on the planet, such as the ten-inch device used by Trex Enterprises in their pioneering research for Starfire at their ( http://www.trexenterprises.com/new_mexico/pages/nmait.html ) active imaging testbed, or the seventeen-inch coelostatic telescope manned by ( http://nitwit.com/joelhome/resume.html ) Joel Aycock, who served NASA GSFC from 1977 to 1985 at the ( http://koa.ifa.hawaii.edu/Lure/ ) University of Hawaii's LURE Observatory, the satellite laser ranging lab in Kula, Hawaii. A big mirror means a big beam.

Starfire uses a telescope for "sending and receiving laser beams" - ( http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=39551 ) CRN - industry newsweekly - "For the Starfire Optical Range (SOR), a division of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, near here, measuring the effect of that air turbulence is critical to a project that uses a telescope for sending and receiving laser beams." - January, 2003

Apparently NASA's Columbia orbiter was also being struck by some sort of bolt or beam of energy that was purple in color. The photographs have not been released publically, only the astrophotographer and NASA have costody of the photographs and the astrophotographer has chosen to remain anonymous.

NASA orbiter struck by "electrical phenomena" - ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/02/MN221641.DTL ) San Francisco Chronicle - "The pictures, taken with a Nikon-880 digital camera on a tripod, reveal what appear to be bright electrical phenomena flashing around the track of the shuttle's passage, but the photographer, who asked not to be identified, will not make them public immediately." - February, 2003

"Glowing purple rope of light" chases down orbiter - ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/05/MN192153.DTL ) San Francisco Chronicle - "In the critical shot, a glowing purple rope of light corkscrews down toward the plasma trail, appears to pass behind it, then cuts sharply toward it from below. As it merges with the plasma trail, the streak itself brightens for a distance, then fades." - February, 2003

Orbiter hit by "purple lightning" - ( http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/07/MN200326.DTL ) San Francisco Chronicle - "Investigators are combing records from a network of ultra-sensitive instruments that might have detected a faint thunderclap in the upper atmosphere at the same time a photograph taken by a San Francisco astronomer appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning striking the shuttle." - February, 2003

NASA admits that photographs of this phenomenon striking the orbiter exist. They say they don't know what it means and they're assessing the photograph's "validity". Presumably the bright guys at NASA don't know about any atmospheric phenomenon that could have caused this purple bolt of energy, but they're consulting some atmospheric scientists to see if anybody, anywhere knows of any such phenomenon.

NASA admits photographs of "bolt of something" exist - ( http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/transcript_pm_briefing_030207.pdf ) NASA - "DITTEMORE: I have seen the photo. We have sent the photo off to be examined, to verify its validity. We have not completed that activity yet. We have invited some atmospheric scientists to come to the Johnson Space Center to help us understand is there any phenomena that they know of that might exist in the upper atmosphere." - February, 2003

One very unnatural phenomenon that manifests as a beam of energy like a bolt of lightning is the Directed Energy Directorate's plasma projectiles:

Directed Energy Directorate's "plasma projectiles" - ( http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030202-ebomb01.htm ) Global Security - "Garcia said the directed-energy unit, which also is working on laser weapons, space-based optics and plasma projectiles some have likened to firing a bolt of lightning, has about 600 employees with an annual budget of about $120 million." - February, 2003

Starfire Optical Range had orbiter "in the crosshairs" - ( "http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/COL_image_030207.html ) NASA - "This image is a view of the underside of Columbia during its entry from mission STS-107 on Feb. 1, 2003, as it passed by the Starfire Optical Range, Directed Energy Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base, N. M. The image was taken at approximately 7:57 a.m. CST (1357 GMT). This image was received by NASA as part of the Columbia accident investigation and is being analyzed." - February, 2003

Starfire was obviously tracking the orbiter, because they captured this ( http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/columbia/107_bw_2_07.jpg ) image of it.

( http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/COL_image_030207.html ) The curiously mistitled document on NASA's web site.

By the way, since the CAIB has taken over there have been lots of these errors creeping into the information NASA provides. The CAIB, whose members routinely contradict three weeks of statements to the press made by NASA engineers, have really done a slash job on the NASA web site. For example, ( http://www.geocities.com/plautus_satire/nasamirror/NASA-CR.htm ) this document, archived on the author's Geocities web space, is completely gone from the NASA page about the Columbia breakup.

The document referenced above was billed as the Columbia resources page, and it is now gone, replaced with a sharply abbreviated version, and the links to the documents in this document are now nowhere to be found on the NASA web site. The documents are still there, unlinked, floating in the void. A lot of those documents are press briefing transcripts, whose names, up until the CAIB took over, followed the convention that follows: transcript_[am/pm_]briefing_.pdf Since the CAIB has taken over, many format, spelling and other errors have been creeping in, such as ( http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/COL_caib_transcript_030212.pdf ), which is a transcript of the 2-11 briefing, datecoded to 2-12, and ( http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/COL_ciab_trnscpt_030218.pdf ), which is dated correctly, but shortens "transcript" to "trnscpt" and misspells "CAIB" as "CIAB". These kind of reckless errors we could expect from the CAIB, since they appear to be very good at second-guessing and contradicting three weeks of statements by the bright engineers at NASA.

What's the origin of this ( http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/COL_image_030207.html ) picture?

The oldest report on this image from Starfire that the author can find is an ( http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news03/020303_news_homadd.shtml ) article in the Albequerque Tribune, by ( mailto:[email protected] ) Sue Vorenberg, dated February 3, 2003. This article states that "astronomers" at Kirtland Air Force Base took this image as the orbiter passed over New Mexico, that the image was turned over to NASA on Sunday, February 2, 2003, and that NASA would not be releasing the image to the public any time soon. The image was then ( http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/transcript_pm_briefing_030207.pdf ) released by NASA four days later. The Albequerque Tribune article also relates a rather curious claim, apparently made by ( mailto:[email protected] ) Rich Garcia of the Directed Energy Directorate.

Rich Garcia of the DED says NASA hushed Starfire - ( http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news03/020303_news_homadd.shtml ) Albequerque Times - "NASA told Kirtland not to release the image or let astronomers at Starfire talk to the media, Rich Garcia, a Kirtland spokesman, said. 'There's so much emotion caught up with all this. That may be what's driving them to keep this quiet for now,' Garcia said." - February, 2003

This is an interesting claim, because essentially what it says is that NASA can give orders to the Directed Energy Directorate, and that those orders will be followed because of all the "emotion caught up with all this," and that NASA is trying to "keep this quiet for now".

The spokesman for the classified energy weapons development laboratory run by the US Air Force is saying that the open, accessible, scientifically rigorous NASA wants to withhold and conceal information from the public.

The ( http://www.spaceflightnow.com/ ) spaceflightnow.com web site reported on February 7, 2003, the day NASA released the image, six days after the orbiter broke up, that "...in Aviation Week & Space Technology's Feb. 10 issue" quotes sources saying Air Force tracking cameras were used to take the image Starfire gave to NASA.

The February 7, 2003 report on spaceflightnow.com is relaying information published on February 10, 2003 by Avation Week & Space Technology. Since the AV&ST article had not been published yet, this is a clear indication that collusion was taking place between these two sources.

Starfire image taken with "Air Force tracking cameras" - ( http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030207avweek/ ) Spaceflight Now - "High-resolution images taken from a ground-based Air Force tracking camera in southwestern U.S. show serious structural damage to the inboard leading edge of Columbia's left wing, as the crippled orbiter flew overhead about 60 sec. before the vehicle broke up over Texas killing the seven astronauts on board Feb. 1." - February, 2003

The article quoted above makes several interesting claims. One claim made by Spaceflight Now is that Air Force tracking cameras took high-resolution images of the orbiter from the ground that show serious structural damage to the leading edge of Columbia's left wing. Clearly the Directed Energy Directorate is talking about the extremely poor-resolution image that they gave to NASA, so surely the DED must have more and better images.

Where are these better images taken by the Directed Energy Directorate and why aren't they being released? Spaceflight Now, on February 25, 2003, released ( http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030225amos/ir.html ) three infrared images and ( http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030225amos/visible.html ) three visible images of the orbiter they say were taken by the US Air Force's Maui telescope. Surely the images taken while the orbiter was breaking up are not being supressed for technological security reasons, as they have published on their web site some outstanding photography, including some photographs of satellites in orbit, with comparison shots from "normal" telescopes to show the difference in the capability of their equipment.

NASA statement about the Starfire image - ( http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/transcript_am_briefing_030207.pdf ) NASA - "KOSTELNIK: It would be speculative for me to add, but it's a significant part of the leading edge; certainly enough to do some analysis on. The other part, of the source of the imagery, it was from a government activity. It was out in the west. And it was within the time period when the anomalies in the left wing are occurring. So I can confirm that much for you. "QUESTION: Can you tell us a little more specifically where it was found and whether the photo was from the ground up, or whether it was a satellite down? "KOSTELNIK: No, it was a ground--this particular one I think you're referring to is a ground-base optical capability. "QUESTION: Can you tell us where? "KOSTELNIK: No." - February, 2003

Another claim this article made was that it showed structural damage to the wing, which NASA flatly denies. All NASA has said about the image is that it's such poor-resolution they can get virtually no data from it, so let the CAIB just "decide" what it means. In other words, "it's irrelevant, let the press offensive deal with it."

So this image came from the Air Force, was taken by the Air Force for their own reasons, were not asked to by NASA and now have switched their story to saying this was three nerds taking pictures of the orbiter on their coffee break using an old Macintosh. But it's still said that the telescope they used was governement property, kept in a cabinet at Starfire. And the Macintosh they used is probably THE Macintosh that serves as a VERY secure router for data between the sensors and the supercluster they use at Starfire to monitor and modify their dynamic optic arrays. Well of course they keep the telescopes in a cabinet. It's one of the myriad they use to track moving targets. And given that Starfire is a SLAB (secure lab) it's unlikely that they just let the nerds play with the toys in the lab on a Saturday morning before dawn.

"The house is on fire, children, we must flee."