Jim Oberg wrote:

I'd like to believe that
an attempted repair would have given the ship another minute or two
to get lower and slower, and perhaps cross the boundary where
suited crewmembers thrown free by the cabin break-up might, might,
just might have survived to low enough that their parachutes would
have saved them. But at any altitude, co-existing even briefly with a
debris cloud of jagged metal is problematical.


Don't forget some of the other stuff that would have been in the area;
the footage of the break-up made it look like the OMS pods and nose RCS
exploded as it got lower, so you might have been jumping into a cloud of
hydrazine and UDMH, which wouldn't have helped your pressure suit or
parachute any.

Had there been warning, you also bet that there wouldn't have been
anybody in the ship doing entry without helmets and gloves -- an
appalling failure of safety practices, in real life, but sadly consistent
with safety standards that had crept up on some (not all, or even most)
of the team.


Yeah, that was a real sloppy thing to do. They were getting very lax
about things, and Story Musgrave's standing reentry really set a bad
example in that regard.

Pat