I meant back on that original drawing board in the early 1970s. Take
the crew cabin and "augment" the design so that it then becomes a
functional crew escape module. We've already seen how the
"unaugmented" (if you will) crew cabin has served as a means of crew
separation from a disintegrating STS stack.


~ CT


The ORIGINAL design called for that and was cut for weight budget reasons

But they didnt downgrade the structure so the crew structure survives very
well.