Oct PopSci: "Get Out Now!" (Shuttle Escape System)

I just got back from the grocery store after having paged through the
October Popular Science cover story, "Get Out Now!" It has some
excellent info on shuttle escape:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviatio...3779-4,00.html

Excerpt:

"The Challenger accident was eminently survivable," says Gutierrez,
pilot of STS 40 and commander of STS 59. "Had the Challenger crew had
ejection seats, they'd have been drinking beers at one of the bars in
Canaveral that evening." More provocatively, Gutierrez makes the same
claim for Columbia. "You put the [mid-deck] crew in a capsule in the
payload bay," he says. "The capsule would be statically and
dynamically stable." If the shuttle was determined unsafe for return,
the capsule would eject into space. A small retro-rocket would slow it
to a safe entry speed, "and they would ride that hummer to the
ground."


~ CT