From Gene DiGennaro:

I still think that had the crew of both 51L and 107 were able to
separate from the orbiter's airframe, they were still doomed. I have
heard that if 51L crew had parachutes, they could have bailed out of
the crew cabin. I have also heard a similar argument for 107.

Any oldtimers here remember the A-3 Skywarrior or the F3D Skynight?
Both of these early jets had an escape chute or slide to bail out of
the aircraft. It worked ONLY when the aircraft was in smooth level
flight. ( Gee if the plane was in smooth level flight, why would you
want to bail out?) The slides were useless in a spinning, out of
control situation that is most common when pilots eject.

I would agree that module stability is essential for success. This
would need to be a design requirement.

As to bailing out while flying straight and level, shuttle crews
practice this for every mission (obviously, not having the energy
capability to make a suitable runway is one reason for doing so).

For an aircraft, there are many reasons why you might need to eject
while flying straight and level. Like defecting to a Western country.
Ha!

(actually there's a sad ending to that story, as you may know)

Perhaps the most often viewed clip of controlled flight ejection was
of that A-10 during flight test at Edwards back in the early '70s.
Great slow motion film of an ejection. The reason for needing to get
out was that the gun was being test fired and hot gas ingestion flamed
out both engines. I can't remember the reason why restart was
unsuccessful, but many attempts were tried. Apparently it has been
determined that you can't maintain enough windmilling hydraulics in
order to safely land the jet (you can see from the film that the
lakebed was reachable). Painful ending to this story too in that the
pilot, after safely ejecting, did an inadequate parachute landing and
cracked his helmet on a rock. It's been a while since I've seen his
interview retelling the story, but I seem to remember that he didn't
fly for a long time afterwards.

(I'm not sure that I'm convinced that an A-10 dead-stick can't be
flown to a safe touchdown. But the point remains that there are lots
of scenarios where you need to punch out smooth in controlled flight.)

Even given a robust orbiter cabin that survived both accidents(51L and
107)it seems awfully unlikely that the crew could have crawled out of
the seats, opened a hatch and yelled "geronimo". Barring a cushion and
large parachute a la B-1A or F-111 escape capsule, shuttle crews still
needed ejection seats to get out of the pressure cabin.

If what you are saying here can be shown to be accurate, then my
response is...

Let's give them ejection seats!

Wings or Airpower magazine had a good article recently on aircraft
escape systems.

I'll keep my eyes out for it. Thanks for the tip.


~ CT