3/5/2003: Columbia reconstruction room

[wolf]

I have seen photos of commercial aircraft reconstructions following crashes, including the Lockerbie bombing and the ValueJet and TWA flight 800 crashes. (I'm a Criticial Incident Stress Debriefer, so these usually show up at the international conference held by the largest debriefing organization ... I ALSO got to see the Branch Davidian autopsy photos that way. Icky, but cool nonetheless.)

It's absolutely incredible to see a series of these photos taken over time ... starting from a pile of scraps of varying sizes that used to be a plane, and the final product which looks amazingly like the original, only one that's been through hell and back.

It's kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle ... you know what the picture on the box looked like, and you even get really detailed diagrams of the whole thing. Only problem is that none of the pieces are tidily cut ... and you don't have the vaguest clue about where you have pieces missing. I'm impressed by the ability and patience of the engineers involved as far as putting it back together. Oh, and their intestinal fortitude. Sometimes there are bits of the passengers found on the pieces. (which is why it becomes a debriefing issue)