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**Pat Flannery** · December 31st 08, 11:50 AM posted to sci.space.history,sci.space.policy

wrote:
The helmets were twisted off of the suits. While described clinically,
it reads like a horror story.

The report states that one reason the helmets were twisted off was
increased air drag due to having the visors open.
The photos of the suit remnants are pretty disturbing also...things like
neck rings and glove attachment rings survived fairly intact, but
burned. The rest of the suit was basically melted and burned away.
Even the fiberglass helmets were badly burned and their plastic visors
melted and burned away.
They couldn't even simulate a situation that left the shoes as badly
damaged as the recovered ones were. They had basically come apart.
Although the medical section of the report is redacted, if you read
around the redacted sections, you get the impression that the failed
shoulder restraint inertia locks meant the astronauts were possibly torn
apart at their waists from the bottom part of the body being restrained
by the waist and crotch belts while the top part flailed around.
Whatever happened to them caused fatal injuries from the effects on the
body of the waist and crotch belts according to the report.
It's probably pretty merciful that they were either unconscious or dead
before this all happened due to the loss of cabin pressure.
One thing that hit me as odd was how the Shuttle is shifted from
autopilot to manual control during descent...merely moving either of the
control sticks will drop out the autopilot, and it has to be returned to
control via a reset of its computer systems.
On the final Columbia mission one of the control sticks got accidentally
bumped prior to atmospheric interface and switched it into manual mode,
so it had to be reset.
If that had happened during a critical section of reentry, you could
have a busy few seconds before you could get it back on autopilot.
That's just asking for trouble; autopilot should be disengaged by
grabbing the control stick _and pressing some sort of switch on it_ like
the firing button on a fighter joystick.

Pat