From Derek Lyons:
(Stuf4) wrote:

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.

We've also seen that in both cases it was not possible to detect the
damage early enough to ensure a clean seperation.

On the contrary, what both cases have shown that is that no
pre-failure detection was necessary for crew cabin separation. In
both cases, the orbiter disintegrated while the crew cabin remained
intact while gaining physical separation from the rest of the debris.


~ CT