From Greg Moo
"bob haller" wrote in message
...

On Jan 30, 8:36 am, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article 80c2ac95-558f-4a3a-842d-9b0e9efa2255
@h2g2000yqa.googlegroups.com, says...
call it whatever you want. the military tries its best to return all
dead military members to their family.I recently had a realtive in
afghanistan see his best friend die. kevin had to kill the 13 year old
aghanistan kid who killed his buddy, then drag his buddys body back to
a safer place.

NASA was not, and is not, part of the military.

And more over there are plenty of places the military has made no attempt at
recovery because the logistics make it too hard (or for other reasons).

Bob did not say that NASA is part of the military. He was talking about the return of the bodies of dead military members. And guess what...

Of the three groups of seven astronauts that have been killed while operating NASA vehicles, guess how many of those were active duty military?

- 6 of 7 during Apollo (with the 7th being ex-military)
- 3 of 7 on Challenger (with one more ex-military)
- 6 of 7 on Columbia (incl 1 IAF)

That's 15 of 21 at a minimum, depending on how you want to count, and two members of this forum brush Bob's comment aside as though it was irrelevant.

Fred pointed out the USS Arizona is a memorial and a tomb to those who died
on that fateful day.

The USS Thresher is not a memorial, but no attempt was made to recover
bodies. It just wasn't possible.

Basically, it'll come to down "if it's reasonably feasible, they'll do what
they can, but not go nuts about it."

Well there is a major distinction that needs to be addressed here. If the Navy were to recover those bodies, guess where they would very likely end up putting them? Right back into the sea.

So it is not simply a matter of feasibility. There *is no precedent* for the situation Bob was asking about. People have died in space. Military people have died in space. But in all of those cases, the bodies came back to earth without added effort from the agencies that had sent them there.

Is it possible that some organization will "go nuts" trying to bring bodies back? We don't know, because we have not yet faced that. Now while there have been thousands of burials at sea, one might point out that there have been some "burials in space". But all such ceremonies to date have been distinctly different because they were remains that had been cremated, and only partial - as in a very small part - of those remains, as far as I've heard about.

So I see no Thresher analogy nor Arizona nor anything else. The precedents we have are from movies like Star Trek photon torpedo caskets. Works of pure fiction. Will that apply when the day finally comes? I don't know.

And what plans did NASA have, or do they have today? I don't know that either. In my own imagination, I can just as easily picture the US Congress funding a corpse deorbit mission as they might wave a wand to proclaim an official burial in space.

If anyone knows what the plans were or are, I would be interested in learning about it.

~ CT


so would nasa just leave the dead crew, but continue flying more
missions? or try to recover the bodies however they could.

Why would it matter? Dead is dead. Declare the site a memorial and let
the bodies rest in peace.

if a soyuz has a problem in transit to ISS and the crew dies are there
any plans to attempt recovering the bodies?

If it can be controlled from the ground, no doubt the Russians would try
to land as close as they can to the normal recovery zone. If not, then
orbital decay will take care of "recovery".

Your morbid curiosity is quite disturbing when combined with your
chicken little paranoia. You must think the whole world is out to get
you.


you know if manned flight continues, espiclly if mars becomes a
destination bad days can occur

and look how long challeger debris recovery continued with emphasis on
the crew compartment...