Writing from the Starbucks down the street from my dad’s in Dallas. We heard the sonic boom around 8am. It shook the windows. WFAA had a crew out to shoot the reentry for the morning newscast, and they caught the whole sad incident on tape. Ironically, some of the debris fell in the town of Palestine. Dad and I watched the video with a self-imposed clinical distance, it seemed to be the best way to handle it.
A steady stream of somber-faced employees filed into the Johnson Space Center this morning as NASA scrambled to gather information on Space Shuttle Columbia’s disintegration over Texas.