From Mark ):

"Had the Challenger crew had
ejection seats, they'd have been drinking beers at one of the bars in
Canaveral that evening."

Except they wouldn't. Prior to the breakup they had no reason to
eject, and had they done so they'd likely have ended up flying through
the shuttle exhaust, which wouldn't be too healthy for them. After the
breakup they would have rapidly lost consciousness and, even if they
had time to pull the ejection handle, they'd have been fired out of a
spinning crew compartment into the middle of a huge debris cloud as
the shuttle broke up... not too healthy either.

I can't speak for Sid, but I can offer my understanding of what he
meant. The Rogers Commission found evidence that the crew remained
conscious after the cabin separated from the orbiter wreckage. The
cabin had a long freefall of several minutes and was recovered from
the ocean floor.

If the crew had ejection seats, they would also have been in pressure
suits. In such a case, even if the cabin had depressurized, the crew
could have initiated egress from the cabin during that long way down
to the ocean. Once out, the chutes deploy and they are floating in
the ocean waiting to be rescued.

Then comes Miller Time, with about the coolest "there I was..." story
ever told.

More provocatively, Gutierrez makes the same
claim for Columbia. "You put the [mid-deck] crew in a capsule in the
payload bay," he says.

If you're going to that extreme, why not just forget the shuttle and
put the crew in a capsule?

Like it or not, NASA can afford to lose shuttle crews, but they can't
afford to lose another shuttle. There won't be year-long shutdowns and
government investigations if a shuttle crew get run over by a bus, but
there probably won't be any more shuttle flights if they lose another
orbiter, whether or not the crew survive.

Interesting position that NASA can afford to lose crews. I understand
the economics behind that statement, but I see it to be untenable in
the face of public opinion.


~ CT