Quoted: I had heard some conspiracy theory type stuff a few years ago but the sources were sketchy websites that didn't seem credible on Discovery channel's When We Left Earth show they just confirmed 3 of the astronauts turned on their air packs after the explosion. Although then they said they would have been unconscious when it hit the water due to it going up to 60000 feet before it started falling if they activated their air packs wouldn't they have stayed conscious?

That's what I heard.

They were alive until the compartment hit the ocean.

I recall that was the conclusion of the investigation at the time; several airpacks had been turned on, they could only be turned on by the crew, and a few minutes of air had been used.  Remarkable they could learn that from whatever remained after impact.  Hopefully they passed out quick, but unfortunately they lived long enough to know they were going to die.

Quoted: They were. Challenger didn't "blow up." It "broke up" from aerodynamic forces when it turned sideways. The crew cabin was relatively intact.

I have a copy of the Offical Report. Its not available anymore but you might find it in a library somewhere. There is a picture in the report with the crew cabin circled. It was found fairly intact for hitting the water from the altitude it did. All of the crew were found together in the wreckage of the crew cabin. NASA was able to almost completely re-assemble the entire vehicle.

Yes, there is evidence that some of the crew survived the initial break-up of the vehicle. Specifically that some of the crew turned on  air packs. The report is quite condemning of NASA. There are pictured of the gantry and vehicle with icicles hanging off of them. Not to mention the problems with stacking the booster that was the cause of the accident. Burn through started within milliseconds of booster ignition. There are pictures of black smoke coming out of the seam, where the burn through took place, from gantry cameras before the vehicle even started to leave the pad.

ETA: If you follow the full view link from the above link you'll be able to see the recommended actions and implementations taken but not the part with all the pictures. I can kind of understand as the pictures in the accident analysis are not very pleasant to look at. They make NASA look like a bunch of asshats. Which they were.

To those who give their lives to make ours better.

Quoted: It's how people, odd or as tasteless as it can be, deal with issues of unspeakable horror or tragedy.

+1

Its laugh or cry.....pick one.

NASA has stated that they were alive but unconscious until they hit the water.

Quoted: Quoted: They were. Challenger didn't "blow up." It "broke up" from aerodynamic forces when it turned sideways. The crew cabin was relatively intact. I have a copy of the Offical Report. Its not available anymore but you might find it in a library somewhere. There is a picture in the report with the crew cabin circled. It was found fairly intact for hitting the water from the altitude it did. All of the crew were found together in the wreckage of the crew cabin. NASA was able to almost completely re-assemble the entire vehicle. Yes, there is evidence that some of the crew survived the initial break-up of the vehicle. Specifically that some of the crew turned on  air packs. The report is quite condemning of NASA. There are pictured of the gantry and vehicle with icicles hanging off of them. Not to mention the problems with stacking the booster that was the cause of the accident. Burn through started within milliseconds of booster ignition. There are pictures of black smoke coming out of the seam, where the burn through took place, from gantry cameras before the vehicle even started to leave the pad.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: They were. Challenger didn't "blow up." It "broke up" from aerodynamic forces when it turned sideways. The crew cabin was relatively intact. I have a copy of the Offical Report. Its not available anymore but you might find it in a library somewhere. There is a picture in the report with the crew cabin circled. It was found fairly intact for hitting the water from the altitude it did. All of the crew were found together in the wreckage of the crew cabin. NASA was able to almost completely re-assemble the entire vehicle. Yes, there is evidence that some of the crew survived the initial break-up of the vehicle. Specifically that some of the crew turned on  air packs. The report is quite condemning of NASA. There are pictured of the gantry and vehicle with icicles hanging off of them. Not to mention the problems with stacking the booster that was the cause of the accident. Burn through started within milliseconds of booster ignition. There are pictures of black smoke coming out of the seam, where the burn through took place, from gantry cameras before the vehicle even started to leave the pad.

Yep, that's some of them. The second picture is one of series of about 6 or 7, IIRC, that show the smoke starting immediately at ignition and becoming progressively greater as the vehicle begins to ascend. The one above is about a second or so after ignition, again IIRC. I have not looked at the report in several years.

I always heard this was what happened.

That explosion happened on my first birthday.

Quoted: I always heard this was what happened. That explosion happened on my first birthday.

I was in the Anti Submarine Warfare Training Center in San Diego,CA.

Quoted: Quoted: Remember all the NASA jokes? No, I don't.  But I do remember watching Challenger blow up on live TV, in my morning History class (7th grade).  Fuck anyone that made jokes about that crew.

Same here, but I think it was 5th or 6th grade.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Remember all the NASA jokes? No, I don't.  But I do remember watching Challenger blow up on live TV, in my morning History class (7th grade).  Fuck anyone that made jokes about that crew. Agreed. I remember the jokes. Some sick fucks out there. Gallows humor is as old as humanity. As odd or as sick as it seems, ask any homicide detective, morgue worker or crime-scene cleaner if they partake. It's how people, odd or as tasteless as it can be, deal with issues of unspeakable horror or tragedy.

I know where you are coming from swingset. Sad, but true. As usual, you bring common sense into the issue.

I've heard that some of the crew were still alive for the 3 min long free fall to the ocean.

That would be Hell.

Quoted: I've heard that some of the crew were still alive for the 3 min long free fall to the ocean. That would be Hell.

Alive? Likely.

Conscious? Unlikely.

The PEAPs that were activated did NOT provide pressurized air. At the altitude of the explosion, you only have a few seconds of consciousness without pressurized oxygen.

challenger is probably history making moment i can remember in my life,

i still have very clear memories to this day of sitting in mrs. strabs second

grade class at okolona elementary school and watching it all unfold on a little tv mounted

on the wall in the corner of the class room. until that day all i ever wanted to be in life was an

astronaut, after that day not so much. the whole thing was a big deal at our scholl cause the

teacher was going into space, i don't really remember what mrs. strab said to us when the

shuttle crashed all i really remember is dead silence for a while after the crash.

Quoted: Quoted: Remember all the NASA jokes? No, I don't.  But I do remember watching Challenger blow up on live TV, in my morning History class (7th grade).  Fuck anyone that made jokes about that crew.

i remember it also in middle school, you must be 35

Quoted: I had heard some conspiracy theory type stuff a few years ago but the sources were sketchy websites that didn't seem credible on Discovery channel's When We Left Earth show they just confirmed 3 of the astronauts turned on their air packs after the explosion. Although then they said they would have been unconscious when it hit the water due to it going up to 60000 feet before it started falling if they activated their air packs wouldn't they have stayed conscious?

According to what I've read and been told by my mom, who stayed abreast of the news when Challenger exploded, at least one astronaut survived the explosion long enough to turn on his air pack and do something with the controls (she doesn't remember any details) but did not survive the fall to earth, obviously.

When it blew up I think they were traveling at about 4500 mph correct?

I saw ONE closeup replay of the explosion that showed the crew cabin leaving the "cloud" of the explsion. Once. It was clearly identifiable as such. And appeared to be "intact", as best I could tell.

I just watched the COLUMBIA break up footage on the  Discovery Channel , MAN o MAN that was horrible.

Quoted: Space travel is risky business.

Especially if you forget to design the door on your space module to open from the inside in case of a fire.

We and the Russians lost a lot of fine men and women in the quest for space. Some were avoidable and died because of someone else's stupidity, most were just casualties in an extremely dangerous endeavor that no one had ever tried before.

Their sacrifices have not been in vain.

Don't fly much but I was at 39,000 a few days ago....man that would be a hell of a fall

Quoted: For the life of me, I can't understand why this is even an issue for people.  The astronauts knew (and still know) what will happen if there is a catastrophic failure.  No matter how good your engineering is, there are still some things that cannot be solved.  One of those problems is how to save the lives of people on spacecraft if there is a complete failure. These brave souls risked, and continue to risk, their lives in the belief that the risk is worth it relative to the contributions that they make to science and to the well-being of this country.  I am profoundly proud of their sacrifice. Everything worth doing has a significant amount of risk associated with it.

+10,000,000

They know that when they go up, things can go wrong. They are willing to take that risk so we continue on in space exploration and science development.

I hope we keep funding NASA and other space research big time, because if we don't, their lives were wasted.

Video of the cabin seperation

At 4:20 guys calls out he sees a white parachute
Filmed from a TV van

Quoted: Quoted: Space travel is risky business. Especially if you forget to design the door on your space module to open from the inside in case of a fire. We and the Russians lost a lot of fine men and women in the quest for space. Some were avoidable and died because of someone else's stupidity, most were just casualties in an extremely dangerous endeavor that no one had ever tried before. Their sacrifices have not been in vain.

Geesh, at the time of the fire on Apollo 1 we were barely out of the vacuum tube era. The technology used back then that actually got us to the moon and back is primitive compared to todays technology. The reason there wasn't a easy open hatch is due to the Libety Bell 7 incident where the blow away hatch accidently deployed on Grissom after splashdown a few years earlier. NASA determined the same thing could happen during flight and discontinued the blow away hatch.

On a related note, there is actually a sci-fi(ish), horror(ish), short story that references the accident, the crew's probable survival (in whatever state) of the fall to the ocean, and the effects on those who played a part in the whole affair.

Written by Dan Simmons (of Dhimmitude fame), it is titled, simply: "Two Minutes Fourty Five Seconds" and it was originally published in Omni magazine.  I know I'm dating myself when I say I miss Omni!

It should still be available in Simmons's short story compendium, "Prayers to Broken Stones".

Well worth checking out, as is all of Simmons's work.

FluxPrism

Quoted: Quoted: NASA failed to build a recovery system for the crew compartment thinking it wouldn't matter anyway if it blew. Now they realize it would matter and don't want us to know how miserably they failed those poor people. Guilty conscience, basically. Any escape system that would have saved the Challenger crew would have been too heavy to launch into space. The escape systems that emerged from the Challenger breakup were stopgap feelgood bullshit that catered to the inexplicable American need to believe that putting people on the end of a giant missile and shooting them at the stars is a safe and routine practice. Much like strapping a man to a nitromethane burning hemi V8 and sending him down a track at 300+mph.. Someone sometime is going to buy the farm doing that shit.

+1

"Sacrifices must be made"
--Otto Lilienthal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal
http://www.skygod.com/quotes/lastwords.html

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Space travel is risky business. Especially if you forget to design the door on your space module to open from the inside in case of a fire. We and the Russians lost a lot of fine men and women in the quest for space. Some were avoidable and died because of someone else's stupidity, most were just casualties in an extremely dangerous endeavor that no one had ever tried before. Their sacrifices have not been in vain. Geesh, at the time of the fire on Apollo 1 we were barely out of the vacuum tube era. The technology used back then that actually got us to the moon and back is primitive compared to todays technology. The reason there wasn't a easy open hatch is due to the Libety Bell 7 incident where the blow away hatch accidently deployed on Grissom after splashdown a few years earlier. NASA determined the same thing could happen during flight and discontinued the blow away hatch.

Apollo 1 was on my tenth birthday. Not a birthday I like to remember.

ETA: Challenger was the day after my 29th.

Quoted: If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. Gus Grissom after the Gemini 3 mission, March 1965

And he ended up giving his life for the Apollo project.

Quoted: Quoted: Space travel is risky business. Especially if you forget to design the door on your space module to open from the inside in case of a fire. We and the Russians lost a lot of fine men and women in the quest for space. Some were avoidable and died because of someone else's stupidity, most were just casualties in an extremely dangerous endeavor that no one had ever tried before. Their sacrifices have not been in vain.

One might argue that if we're not losing a few crews every year then we aren't doing enough, nor pushing the limits enough.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Space travel is risky business. Especially if you forget to design the door on your space module to open from the inside in case of a fire. We and the Russians lost a lot of fine men and women in the quest for space. Some were avoidable and died because of someone else's stupidity, most were just casualties in an extremely dangerous endeavor that no one had ever tried before. Their sacrifices have not been in vain. Geesh, at the time of the fire on Apollo 1 we were barely out of the vacuum tube era. The technology used back then that actually got us to the moon and back is primitive compared to todays technology. The reason there wasn't a easy open hatch is due to the Libety Bell 7 incident where the blow away hatch accidently deployed on Grissom after splashdown a few years earlier. NASA determined the same thing could happen during flight and discontinued the blow away hatch.

I'd rather fall out of the sky than burn alive...

But yeah, my mom at the time worked for Rocketdyne, which made the main engines for the Shuttle...they were shook up for months until it was believed to be the SRBs...she was 6 months pregnant with me at the time...

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Space travel is risky business. Especially if you forget to design the door on your space module to open from the inside in case of a fire. We and the Russians lost a lot of fine men and women in the quest for space. Some were avoidable and died because of someone else's stupidity, most were just casualties in an extremely dangerous endeavor that no one had ever tried before. Their sacrifices have not been in vain. One might argue that if we're not losing a few crews every year then we aren't doing enough, nor pushing the limits enough.

If you compare the safety guidelines of today to those used during the Apollo missions, your jaw would drop.  We used to play for keeps back in the day.  Now, crew safety is a much larger (read #1) priority.  Although that is certainly not a bad thing, it has also hindered the program.

For example, even though the problems which caused the Challenger disaster were diagnosed rather quickly and fixed, it took innumerable Congressional hearings and studies before the Shuttle flew again.  I'm not sure that the level of legislative involvement in what is ultimately an engineering issue is necessary.  It just causes delays and extra expense.

Like I said earlier, this is a dangerous business and everybody involved knows the risks.  We will continue to lose brave men and women in our quest for the stars, that is just the reality of the situation.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: They were. Challenger didn't "blow up." It "broke up" from aerodynamic forces when it turned sideways. The crew cabin was relatively intact. I have a copy of the Offical Report. Its not available anymore but you might find it in a library somewhere. There is a picture in the report with the crew cabin circled. It was found fairly intact for hitting the water from the altitude it did. All of the crew were found together in the wreckage of the crew cabin. NASA was able to almost completely re-assemble the entire vehicle. Yes, there is evidence that some of the crew survived the initial break-up of the vehicle. Specifically that some of the crew turned on  air packs. The report is quite condemning of NASA. There are pictured of the gantry and vehicle with icicles hanging off of them. Not to mention the problems with stacking the booster that was the cause of the accident. Burn through started within milliseconds of booster ignition. There are pictures of black smoke coming out of the seam, where the burn through took place, from gantry cameras before the vehicle even started to leave the pad. img162.imageshack.us/img162/7127/challengericemu4.jpg img49.imageshack.us/img49/3231/challengerpuffdg6.jpg

my understanding is when those fires are lighted there is no turning them off. how do they abort at that point?

Quoted: my understanding is when those fires are lighted there is no turning them off. how do they abort at that point?

No need to separate them from the stack, the orbiter - as far as I know - would just detach from the main fuel tank, and glide back to earth.

(Yeah, right.)

The range safety officer could blow up the SRBs.  They were blown up after Challenger exploded.

Quoted: Quoted: I've heard that some of the crew were still alive for the 3 min long free fall to the ocean. That would be Hell. Alive? Likely. Conscious? Unlikely. The PEAPs that were activated did NOT provide pressurized air. At the altitude of the explosion, you only have a few seconds of consciousness without pressurized oxygen.

Did they not wear the full pressurized g-suits with helmets like they did during the previous Friendship, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and now subsequent flights?

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: They were. Challenger didn't "blow up." It "broke up" from aerodynamic forces when it turned sideways. The crew cabin was relatively intact. I have a copy of the Offical Report. Its not available anymore but you might find it in a library somewhere. There is a picture in the report with the crew cabin circled. It was found fairly intact for hitting the water from the altitude it did. All of the crew were found together in the wreckage of the crew cabin. NASA was able to almost completely re-assemble the entire vehicle. Yes, there is evidence that some of the crew survived the initial break-up of the vehicle. Specifically that some of the crew turned on  air packs. The report is quite condemning of NASA. There are pictured of the gantry and vehicle with icicles hanging off of them. Not to mention the problems with stacking the booster that was the cause of the accident. Burn through started within milliseconds of booster ignition. There are pictures of black smoke coming out of the seam, where the burn through took place, from gantry cameras before the vehicle even started to leave the pad. img162.imageshack.us/img162/7127/challengericemu4.jpg img49.imageshack.us/img49/3231/challengerpuffdg6.jpg my understanding is when those fires are lighted there is no turning them off. how do they abort at that point?

You don't.  Once the SRB's are ignited, you cannot abort.  They are giant chemical propellant firecrackers.

The main engines can be shut off, though.  I was at a launch years ago where they fired up the main engines and then scrubbed about 2 seconds before the SRBs were to be lit.

Once the SRBs are lit, you are committed to the process...for good or bad.

Quoted: Video of the cabin seperation At 4:20 guys calls out he sees a white parachute Filmed from a TV van

isn't the chute from one of the Solid Rocket Boosters?

Quoted: Quoted: my understanding is when those fires are lighted there is no turning them off. how do they abort at that point? Separate them from the shuttle stack early, then the range safety officer blows them up.  The RSO blew the SRBs up when the Challenger exploded.

While that sounds practical, it really isn't because the shuttle is still towing the external tank.  All of the studies on that point found that the most likely result would be a loss of the vehicle anyway because it would no longer have enough thrust to move forward.  If you dumped the ET and the SRB's, the shuttle would still fall like a rock because it would lose too much momentum.  Plus, the payload is still going to be inside the vehicle.  It was never designed to fly in "airplane" mode with the payload.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: my understanding is when those fires are lighted there is no turning them off. how do they abort at that point? Separate them from the shuttle stack early, then the range safety officer blows them up.  The RSO blew the SRBs up when the Challenger exploded. While that sounds practical, it really isn't because the shuttle is still towing the external tank.  All of the studies on that point found that the most likely result would be a loss of the vehicle anyway because it would no longer have enough thrust to move forward.  If you dumped the ET and the SRB's, the shuttle would still fall like a rock because it would lose too much momentum.  Plus, the payload is still going to be inside the vehicle.  It was never designed to fly in "airplane" mode with the payload.

I've heard many, many times - before and after Challenger - that the shuttle can abort and return to launch site, or abort to Africa, by detaching from the stack.

Not once have I believed it.

Quoted: Quoted: Space travel is risky business. Agreed. God bless our heroes, in plainclothes and uniforms, camo and spacesuits.

+1

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: my understanding is when those fires are lighted there is no turning them off. how do they abort at that point? Separate them from the shuttle stack early, then the range safety officer blows them up.  The RSO blew the SRBs up when the Challenger exploded. While that sounds practical, it really isn't because the shuttle is still towing the external tank.  All of the studies on that point found that the most likely result would be a loss of the vehicle anyway because it would no longer have enough thrust to move forward.  If you dumped the ET and the SRB's, the shuttle would still fall like a rock because it would lose too much momentum.  Plus, the payload is still going to be inside the vehicle.  It was never designed to fly in "airplane" mode with the payload.

This was the problem that popped into my head. If they separate early they are still going to fall like a rock.  

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: my understanding is when those fires are lighted there is no turning them off. how do they abort at that point? Separate them from the shuttle stack early, then the range safety officer blows them up.  The RSO blew the SRBs up when the Challenger exploded. While that sounds practical, it really isn't because the shuttle is still towing the external tank.  All of the studies on that point found that the most likely result would be a loss of the vehicle anyway because it would no longer have enough thrust to move forward.  If you dumped the ET and the SRB's, the shuttle would still fall like a rock because it would lose too much momentum.  Plus, the payload is still going to be inside the vehicle.  It was never designed to fly in "airplane" mode with the payload. I've heard many, many times - before and after Challenger - that the shuttle can abort and return to launch site, or abort to Africa, by detaching from the stack. Not once have I believed it.

It is a falsehood.  It COULD work only in a very specific set of circumstances.  All of those circumstances essentially assume that there wouldn't be a catastrophic failure of one of the mission systems anyway.  Which begs the question...why would you abort unless you had a catastrophic failure?

It's just unrealistic, unfortunately.  If something serious goes wrong on the way up or the way down, its just time to grit your teeth and pray.

:o SHIN-RA came up with a solution to the solid rocket booster shutoff.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7PpWXpWnLo

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: They were. Challenger didn't "blow up." It "broke up" from aerodynamic forces when it turned sideways. The crew cabin was relatively intact. I have a copy of the Offical Report. Its not available anymore but you might find it in a library somewhere. There is a picture in the report with the crew cabin circled. It was found fairly intact for hitting the water from the altitude it did. All of the crew were found together in the wreckage of the crew cabin. NASA was able to almost completely re-assemble the entire vehicle. Yes, there is evidence that some of the crew survived the initial break-up of the vehicle. Specifically that some of the crew turned on  air packs. The report is quite condemning of NASA. There are pictured of the gantry and vehicle with icicles hanging off of them. Not to mention the problems with stacking the booster that was the cause of the accident. Burn through started within milliseconds of booster ignition. There are pictures of black smoke coming out of the seam, where the burn through took place, from gantry cameras before the vehicle even started to leave the pad. img162.imageshack.us/img162/7127/challengericemu4.jpg img49.imageshack.us/img49/3231/challengerpuffdg6.jpg my understanding is when those fires are lighted there is no turning them off. how do they abort at that point?

Once the SRB's fire. They can't abort.

I was in 1st grade watching it live. Sad day indeed.

Chapter 5: An eternity of descent Evidence hints that astronauts were alive during fall By Jay Barbree Correspondent NBC News CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The water was murky, swirling from surface winds, keeping divers Terry Bailey and Mike McAllister from seeing more than an arm’s reach in front of them. They had been diving for days, recovering Challenger’s debris, and, now, on this dive, they had only six minutes left in their tanks. They were about 100 feet down, moving across the seafloor, when they almost bumped into what at first appeared to be a tangle of wire and metal. Nothing that unusual, nothing they hadn’t seen on many dives before. Then, they saw it. A spacesuit, full of air, legs floating toward the surface. There’s someone in it, Terry Bailey thought. No, that’s not right, he admonished himself. Shuttle astronauts do not wear pressurized spacesuits during powered flight. They wear jumpsuits. They carry along two pressure suits if they should be needed for a repair spacewalk. He turned to his partner, Mike McAllister. They just looked at each other and thought, “Jackpot.” This is what we’ve been looking for. The crew cabin. Low on air, the two divers made a quick inspection, marked the location with a buoy and returned to their boat to report the find. A cabin intact Early the next morning, the USS Preserver recovery ship put to sea. The divers began their grim task of recovering the slashed and twisted remains of Challenger’s crew cabin and the remains of its seven occupants. On first inspection, it was obvious that the shuttle Challenger’s crew vessel had survived the explosion during ascent. A 2-year-long investigation into how the crew cabin, and possibly its occupants, had survived was begun. Veteran astronauts Robert Crippen and Bob Overmyer, along with other top experts, sifted through every bit of tracking data. They studied all the crew cabin’s systems — even the smallest, most insignificant piece of wreckage. They learned that at the instant of ignition of the main fuel tank, when a sheet of flame swept up past the window of pilot Mike Smith, there could be no question Smith knew — even in that single moment — that disaster had engulfed them. Something awful, something that had never before happened to a shuttle, was upon them like a great beast. Mike Smith uttered his final words for history, preserved on a crew cabin recorder. “Uh-oh!” An ultimate epitaph. Immediately after, all communications between the shuttle and the ground were lost. At first, many people watching the blast, and others in mission control, believed the astronauts had died instantly — a blessing in its own right. But they were wrong. NASA’s intensive, meticulous studies of every facet of that explosion, comparing what happened to other blowups of aircraft and spacecraft, and the knowledge of the forces of the blast and the excellent shape and construction of the crew cabin, finally led some investigators to a mind-numbing conclusion. They were alive all the way down. Rise and fall The explosive release of fuel that dismembered the wings and other parts of the shuttle were not that great to cause immediate death, or even serious injury to the crew. Challenger was designed to withstand a wing-loading force of 3 G’s (three times gravity), with another 1.5 G safety factor built in. When the external tank exploded and separated the two solid boosters, rapid-fire events, so swift they all seemed of the same instant, took place. In a moment, all fuel was gone from the big tank. The computers still functioned and, right on design plan, dutifully noted the lack of fuel and shut down the engines. It was a supreme exercise in futility, because by then Challenger was no longer a spacecraft. One solid booster broke free, its huge flame a cutting torch across Challenger, separating a wing. Enormous G-loads snapped free the other wing. Challenger came apart — but the crew cabin remained essentially intact, able to sustain its occupants. The explosive force sheared metal assemblies, but was almost precisely the force needed to separate the still-intact crew compartment from the expanding cloud of flaming debris and smoke. What the best data tell the experts is that the Challenger broke up 48,000 feet above the Atlantic. The undamaged crew compartment, impelled by the speed already achieved, soared to a peak altitude of 65,000 feet before beginning its curve earthward. The crew cabin, reinforced aluminum, stayed solid, riding its own velocity in a great curving ballistic arc, reached the top of its curve, and then began the dive toward the ocean. It was only when the compartment smashed, like a speeding bullet, into the sea’s surface, drilling a hollow from the surface down to the ocean floor, that it crumpled into a tangled mass. Mercifully unconscious? But even if the crew cabin had survived intact, wouldn’t the violent pitching and yawing of the cabin as it descended toward the ocean created G-forces so strong as to render the astronauts unconscious? That may have once been believed. But that was before the investigation turned up the key piece of evidence that led to the inescapable conclusion that they were alive: On the trip down, the commander and pilot’s reserved oxygen packs had been turned on by astronaut Judy Resnik, seated directly behind them. Furthermore, the pictures, which showed the cabin riding its own velocity in a ballistic arc, did not support an erratic, spinning motion. And even if there were G-forces, commander Dick Scobee was an experienced test pilot, habituated to them. The evidence led experts to conclude the seven astronauts lived. They worked frantically to save themselves through the plummeting arc that would take them 2 minutes and 45 seconds to smash into the ocean. That is when they died — after an eternity of descent.

So prior to the Challenger disaster, Shuttle Astronauts only wore jumpsuits and not pressure suits during liftoff?

They certainly do now www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WdQHQY0xJs and www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwfsFtpACFw

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I've heard that some of the crew were still alive for the 3 min long free fall to the ocean. That would be Hell. Alive? Likely. Conscious? Unlikely. The PEAPs that were activated did NOT provide pressurized air. At the altitude of the explosion, you only have a few seconds of consciousness without pressurized oxygen. Did they not wear the full pressurized g-suits with helmets like they did during the previous Friendship, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and now subsequent flights?

Wrong.
They wore the same suits they do today. They are not pressure suits.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I've heard that some of the crew were still alive for the 3 min long free fall to the ocean. That would be Hell. Alive? Likely. Conscious? Unlikely. The PEAPs that were activated did NOT provide pressurized air. At the altitude of the explosion, you only have a few seconds of consciousness without pressurized oxygen. Did they not wear the full pressurized g-suits with helmets like they did during the previous Friendship, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and now subsequent flights? Wrong. They wore the same suits they do today. They are not pressure suits.

Well that was a question. But I found an answer from wikipedia.

Source On the first four shuttle missions, astronauts wore modified U.S. Air Force high-altitude full-pressure suits, which included a full-pressure helmet during ascent and descent. From the fifth flight, STS-5, until the loss of Challenger, one-piece light blue nomex flight suits and partial-pressure helmets were worn. A less-bulky, partial-pressure version of the high-altitude pressure suits with a helmet was reinstated when shuttle flights resumed in 1988. The LES ended its service life in late 1995, and was replaced by the full-pressure Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES), which resembles the Gemini space suit worn in the mid-1960s.

And today they wear ACES

The next generation suits were just announced. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_Space_Suit

I can remember this like it was yesterday and you'll have to forgive me for posting at length about it, but I'm trying to pass a kidney stone and it's killing me so I'm a little emotional.

I was in the seventh grade with kids who were a year older because I skipped fifth grade. I was that geeky little girl with the stack of books in her arms at all times. My best friends were the teachers because I was *that* girl that *everyone* aims spitballs at. I was the nerd, the geek, the chubby bookworm who sat in the back of the glass and chewed on her hair. At any rate, the prospect of a teacher (and I loved all mine) going into space and a WOMAN teacher at that made me think that I could do ANYTHING. Christa was *real*. She wasn't a movie star, she was an ordinary girl just like me.

I remember our Science class followed all the news footage and were assigned projects based on the entire mission for our grade for that cycle. The shuttle launched and we all leaned toward the television like we expected to be sucked in and up with them. It was breathtaking. No one made a sound. You could have heard a pin drop. And I can remember tears streaming down my face before it ever exploded because Christa McAuliffe was carrying MY DREAMS into space with her. And I was flying right there with her.

It was such a big deal for school kids to know that one of OUR mentors had become an 'astronaut' so she could teach us all something from outer space. Learning was suddenly so cool. It made teachers something MORE than just flesh and bone for a second ... it made them larger than life. If THAT teacher could go into space, what could MY teacher do? It was headline news and in every paper. Christa McAuliffe was as recognizable as President Reagan. People talked about an average, ordinary woman going into Space like it was the most unbelievable thing in the world and it was. This was your sister, your wife, your mother, your neighbor ... doing something grand and it gave you hope.

When the explosion happened ... desks scraped the floor as people pushed away from the television. It was absolutely terrifying. Even before they announced that something had gone wrong ... we knew. Our hearts skipped beats, our mouths fell open, and our brains began to process that we couldn't see the shuttle anymore. The teacher's aide rushed to the front of the room to turn the broadcast off, but our Science teacher overruled her and let us keep watching. I remember that he cried into a handkerchief that had been monogrammed with initials that weren't his and I had never heard a man cry that way in my life. I think he taught all the boys in class that day how to be men.

My project for Science class was going to be a solar system rooted in an apple ... because for me ... I believed that the universe would cease to exist without knowledge. My project was already finished and ready to go.

What my project became, however, was a headstone that I made out of wood and used my brother's woodburning kit to complete. It simply said 'Dreamers, Believers, and Stars' and listed all the astronauts alphabetically with the exception of McAuliffe and she was at the very top. My Science teacher asked me what my 'theme' was and I said 'remembering'. My niece recently had that same Science teacher and believe it or not, that headstone is in a glass case in his classroom to this day. Even though he only gave me a B for it.

To this day, I will stop what I'm doing on January 28th and glance toward Space and remember that the risks we take are usually worth it, even if it doesn't turn out the way you planned. Christa died a dreamer, but she became a star.

Sorry for taking up so much bandwidth.

I recall seeing a picture of the recovered crew cabin. The picture someone above referanced. I was shocked at the condition. It was intact to the point of retaing its original shape, and intergrity of the skin was "mostly" there. There were burn , and scorch marks all over it IIRC. But, it was in remarkable shape for what it had been thru.

That is a double edged sword, I guess. It saved their lives, only to prolong them enough they may have been awake at impact. I damn sure hope not, but I bet at least one was.

There were pieces of tangled up skin, wire, and plumbing from the seperated end, but
the designers built a strong area for the crew to occupy on the way up.