Challenger and Other Space Tragedies

[**Jenna**]

I just found this. I don't know how true it is though...
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_024b.html

And another...
http://www.blurofinsanity.com/challenger.html

I've read those. I don't know if its true or not. Its sad if it is.

[JestersKiss]

I remember i was in the 6th grade, home sick with chicked pox. was misrable lying on couch trying to do the itch but dont get caught itching thing. Watching the tv,,,,nothing but soaps and news ....then the spaceshuttle blew up,,,,,,,i could not believe my eyes. .........just like it was yesterday

[Tornillo]

The bodies were recovered in the Challenger accident.

And NASA has pictures taken by divers in the water and there are autopsy photos as well.

NASA also have photos of the Apollo 1 crew and have never released them. Only a guess but I don't think any of those photos were ever been released while any of the surviving families are alive.

[neilmpenny]

And NASA has pictures taken by divers in the water and there are autopsy photos as well.

NASA also have photos of the Apollo 1 crew and have never released them. Only a guess but I don't think any of those photos were ever been released while any of the surviving families are alive.

These pics will never be released period.

[Alanwench]

I was a freshman in college when this happened. My boyfriend was supposed to meet me after class, but he wasn't waiting for me. I walked back to the dorm and everyone was clustered around the TV in the living room area of the mod. Someone told me the shuttle blew up. I immediately asked, "They got out, right?" The looks on their faces told me in an instant.
That morning, I'd heard about the freezing temperatures and remembered what my boyfriend (a mechanical engineering student) told me about gaskets, O-rings, etc. His prof. had been talking the previous week about the shuttle's construction and how everything worked. I kept thinking that they would certainly scrap the launch. It was so surreal to watch the flame creep along the Solid Rocket Booster tank and then the entire shuttle was a solid flame and that awful vapor trail/cloud that hung in the sky.

I was a freshman in High School...my science teacher once worked for NASA and was one of many finalists for the teacher in space program...we were watching the launch that day as it happened..we studied up on the shuttle for about a month prior to the launch and I remember getting up that day and the reporters specifically discussing how the boosters had to be "thawed out" that morning...I told my mom and dad..that's not good and explained that the gaskets are not meant to go from extreme cold to extreme heat...it's like taking a rubber band and freezing it and then adding direct heat...first it will crack then it will burn and melt

long story short when I saw the boosters go and the look on Mr. Dwyer's face I knew what had happened...some in class were whoooping and hollering to celebrate but the few of us that were actually paying attention got it..he immediately excused class for the rest of the day...even at that young age I knew that I just witnessed 7 people die and it shook me up

hadn't felt that way again until 9/11 to this day seeing footage of either gets me very choked up

the Columbia disaster was equally upsetting to me especially when I heard the reports about how long the debris field was...neither crew stood a chance

[deathybrad]

That last bit of the transcript (after the explosion) seems fake. Just too many cliches and it reads like a sappy movie. If it is real, it is terribly sad but I think they were dead with the explosion or unconcious.

Exactly, astronauts are the best under pressure, if they were alive they would have been trying to figure out how to save their own lives. However they were almost certainly not alive, probably not intact, and certainly not conscious. Space craft are not designed to withstand an explosion, they're barely designed to withstand liftoff or a re-entry.

To address the o-ring issue it wasn't a big deal that they were cold, it was a big deal that NASA didn't both to change them after every lift-off.

[undertakeress]

I was in 4th grade when the Challenger happened, we were all in the cafeteria. I was already a Death Hag and looking for the bodies to come dropping out.

I just had gallbladder surgery when the Columbia exploded and watched it on CNN in the hospital room. I told them to get me some more Dilauded stat.

[Seagorath]

JERUSALEM - Pages from an Israeli astronaut's diary that survived the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia and a 37-mile fall to earth are going on display this weekend for the first time in Jerusalem.


The diary belonged to Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut and one of seven crew members killed when Columbia disintegrated upon re-entering the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003. Part of the restored diary will be displayed at the Israel Museum beginning Sunday.

A little over two months after the shuttle explosion, NASA searchers found 37 pages from Ramon's diary, wet and crumpled, in a field just outside the U.S. town of Palestine, Texas. The diary survived extreme heat in the explosion, extreme atmospheric cold, and then "was attacked by microorganisms and insects" in the field where it fell, said museum curator Yigal Zalmona.

"It's almost a miracle that it survived â?? it's incredible," Zalmona said. There is "no rational explanation" for how it was recovered when most of the shuttle was not, he said.

NASA officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. space agency returned the diary to Ramon's wife, Rona, who brought it to forensics experts at the Israel Museum and from the Israeli police. The diary took about a year to restore, Zalmona said, and it took police scientists about four more years to decipher the pages. About 80 percent of the text has been deciphered, and the rest remains unreadable, he said.

Two pages will be displayed. One contains notes written by Ramon, and the other is a copy of the Kiddush prayer, a blessing over wine that Jews recite on the Sabbath. Zalmona said Ramon copied the prayer into his diary so he could recite it on the space shuttle and have the blessing broadcast to Earth.

Most of the pages contain personal information which Ramon's wife did not wish to make public, he said.

"We agreed to do the restoration completely respecting the family's privacy and the sensitivity about how intimate the document is," museum director James Snyder said.

The diary provides no indication Ramon knew anything about potential problems on the shuttle. Columbia's wing was gashed by a chunk of fuel tank foam insulation at liftoff and broke up in flames just 16 minutes before it was scheduled to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. All seven astronauts on board were killed.

The diary is being displayed as part of a larger exhibit of famous documents from Israel's history, held to mark the country's 60th anniversary this year. Also on display will be Israel's 1948 declaration of independence, the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan and a bloodstained sheet of paper with lyrics to a peace anthem that was carried by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the time of his assassination in 1995.

[Aries65]

I have an ex here in Texas, who has a friend that recovered some of the stuff from the Columbia crash - including a helmet. They even kept it all. No, I didn't see it nor do I know the person - just going by what my ex told me.

[Armcast]

A lot of the wreckage came down in East Texas near where I grew up. One of my friends from high school was a deputy sheriff and found some of the pieces. He said it was surreal just looking at them...

[TheMysterian]

Very intresting post,wherever it belongs.

[Andrea]

It was way too cold to launch that morning, re Challenger, and some of the Morton Thiokol guys argued against it the day before, but at the last moment they waffled, under pressure from NASA. The launch had already been scrapped before and NASA was impatient and they were all embarrassed so they made a "management decision" to proceed with the launch and then hells bells did they all have egg and blood all over their faces.

[Tony Trout]

Interesting Screw but that whole scenario is up for debate.
It has been said the crew compartment stayed intact after the explosion (as your post documents) but other investigators have said that the crew compartment was destroyed apon the impact of the explosion.
There is a whole webpage that has the "secret" voice recording transcript of the crew compartment before and after the explosion and if you have seen it, it's disturbing and intense but it is dismissed as a fake.
Personally, I have no idea how it all went down (no pun intended).

I think it's fake (the voice recording). It sounds too dramatized and 'soap opera-ish' to be real.

My mother was a teacher at the time and one of the people that they were thinking of going up there. She didn't get chosen(thank goodness)

I had a reading teacher that had signed up to go on that very same flight, also. Of course, she wasn't chosen either (thank God).

I remember hearing or reading somewhere that there are recordings of the astronauts screaming after Challenger blew up. Has anyone else heard anything like this?

Read my first response....I think it's fake (the voice recording).

And NASA has pictures taken by divers in the water and there are autopsy photos as well.

NASA also have photos of the Apollo 1 crew and have never released them. Only a guess but I don't think any of those photos were ever been released while any of the surviving families are alive.

These pics will never be released period.

Thank God for that. The families of the victims don't need something like that to be made public in the least. I say let's give them some respect.

[Giada]

Apollo Tragedy

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary...ollo1info.html

[Miho]

Just want to bump guys. NASA released a new report today detailing (in graphic detail) what happened on that fateful day. Included are pics of the debris recovered. They include pieces of the shuttle, the seats the crew were sitting in, and some crew suit pieces. Nothing too graphic. Just a sad read and looooong 400 pages.

Enjoy :-)
http://www.nasa.gov/news/reports/index.html

Called Columbia Crew Survival Report

[RubySlippers]

Just want to bump guys. NASA released a new report today detailing (in graphic detail) what happened on that fateful day. Included are pics of the debris recovered. They include pieces of the shuttle, the seats the crew were sitting in, and some crew suit pieces. Nothing too graphic. Just a sad read and looooong 400 pages.

Enjoy :-)
http://www.nasa.gov/news/reports/index.html

Called Columbia Crew Survival Report

400 pages?! Ugh, I need the down and dirty short version...
But thanks for the post...

[Miho]

400 pages?! Ugh, I need the down and dirty short version...
But thanks for the post...

Yeah I know. A lot of it is techincal hog wash, but like any research paper it gives the summary at the beginning. Problem is the pics are spread throughout the report.

By the way I had a question. Would the Challenger Tape and any pictures taken of debris be considered out of the scope of FOIA?

[duster]

400 pages?! Ugh, I need the down and dirty short version...
But thanks for the post...

Ask, and you shall recieve...

BC-Columbia Astronauts, 2nd Ld-Writethru,0977
NASA reports graphic details of Columbia deaths
Eds: Updates thruout, adds byline, photos, Web link to report; NASA
briefing set for 4 p.m. EST.
AP Photo NY112, NY115, NY116, NY113, NY111
AP Graphic COLUMBIA REPORT
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Seat restraints, pressure suits and helmets of
the doomed crew of the space shuttle Columbia didn't work well,
leading to "lethal trauma" as the out-of-control ship lost
pressure and broke apart, killing all seven astronauts, a new NASA
report says.
essurization or from hitting something as the
spacecraft spun violently out of control. The report said it wasn't
clear which of those events killed them.
And in the case of the helmets and other gear, three crew
members weren't wearing gloves, which provide crucial protection
from depressurization. One wasn't in the seat, one wasn't wearing a
helmet and several were not fully strapped in. The gloves were off
because they are too bulky to do certain tasks and there is too
little time to prepare for re-entry, the report notes.
Had all those procedures been followed, the astronauts might
have lived longer and been able to take more actions, but they
still wouldn't have survived, the report says.
The new report comes five years after an independent
investigation panel issued its own exhaustive e
moon and Mars, said Clark, who now works for the National Space
Biomedical Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in
Houston.
Kirstie McCool Chadwick, sister of pilot William McCool, said a
copy of the report arrived at her Florida home by FedEx Tuesday
morning but that she had not read it.
"We've moved on," Chadwick said. "I'll read it. But it's
private. It's our business ... Our family has moved on from the
accident and we don't want to reopen wounds.
----
Correspondent Mike Schneider in Orlando, Fla., contributed to
this report.
------
On the Net:
The NASA report: http://www.nasa.gov/news/reports/index.html

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
APTV 12-30-08 1432EST

[Miho]

This just made me go

"We've moved on," Chadwick said. "I'll read it. But it's
private. It's our business ... Our family has moved on from the
accident and we don't want to reopen wounds.


"Nothing to see here folks just move along."

[Miho]

So gloves would have prolonged their lives and probably would have let them burn to death instead of just passing out. Yeah that sounds a lot better thanks!

[duster]

This just made me go

"We've moved on," Chadwick said. "I'll read it. But it's
private. It's our business ... Our family has moved on from the
accident and we don't want to reopen wounds.


"Nothing to see here folks just move along."

LOL! That really stood out for me too Miho. That is not how I'd like to be remembered by family: "We've moved on..."

[Miho]

Found this... Seems to be lots of pictures from some sort of report.

http://www.capcomespace.net/dossiers/espace_US/shuttle/1986-95/51L

[Miho]

God I am such a DH :-P

In fact, no clear evidence was ever found that the crew cabin depressurized at all. There was certainly no sudden, catastrophic loss of air of the type that would have knocked the astronauts out within seconds. Such an event would have caused the mid-deck floor to buckle upward; that simply didn't happen.
In any case, they seemed almost weightless at first. Then, as the hurtling cabin reached its terminal velocity, they strained forward, toward the Earth, held in their seats by the webbing straps across their laps and legs and over their shoulders.
The cabin swayed only slightly -- a degree or two each way. Behind it, lengths of wire, hundreds of them, trailed like the tail of a child's kite, helping to stabilize it. They were part of the shuttle's wiring harness.
The free-fall lasted about 2½ minutes. The cabin nose was tilted a little to the right when it hit the ocean, just enough to send the cabin crashing onto its left side. It hit at about 200 miles an hour, fracturing like a bottle dropped onto a concrete pavement, but held together by the thousands of feet of wire that surround the cabin like a kind of high-tech cocoon. The astronauts were torn from their seats and thrown to the left, which was now down. They died instantly, dismembered by the impact.


http://www.lutins.org/nasa.html

[Miho]

Same article

The bodies were not sundered in the way one might have expected, certainly not as badly as those from particularly bad jet airliner crashes. But they had been in 95 feet of warmish ocean water, in an area teeming with life, for six weeks. They were not really recognizable as former people. Such soft tissue as remained had become almost gelatinous and very delicate. Some had taken on a waxy, soapy texture, due to a hydrolysis reaction that takes place in seawater over time. Recovery was not a simple task. There was damage from shrimp and crabs.
Carefully, one at a time, they were brought aboard the Preserver. The remains -- it took a leap of faith and imagination to call them bodies, though that's what they were -- were placed in black plasticized body bag liners. It was unknown what if any secrets they could still tell, but it was critical that as much as possible be done to preserve what remained of the seven Challenger astronauts.

[Miho]

You won't get an argument from Reeves. "They asked us to sign death certificates," he says. "We said under no circumstances would we sign death certificates, because our job was to determine the cause and manner of death, and we had been prevented from doing that.
"They were lying to us, even then. They had already done up their own death certificates."
The single sheets are headed "CERTIFICATE OF DEATH" and come from Johnson Space Center in Houston. Each is the same:

"This is to certify that on Jan. 28, 1986, at or about 11:39 a.m. EST, and approximately 18 miles off the Atlantic Coast of Florida near the Kennedy Space Center in the County of Brevard, State of Florida, [astronaut's name], a [sex] person of the age of [age] died when the shuttle spacecraft Challenger in which [he or she] was riding exploded; that such person was a native of [home town] and that the Social Security number of such person was [number]."

They are signed by James S. Logan, chief of the medical operations branch JSC.
They are dated Jan. 30, 1986, except for that of astronaut Judy Resnik. Her last name was misspelled on the original certificate, so an amended one was filed on March 13.

[Miho]

Rumors about recovery of astronaut remains were the No. 1 topic of debate among reporters and lower-level NASA and contractor employees who were not reticent about passing them on. Sources said robot cameras had photographed Smith and Scobee strapped in their flight seats in the remains of the shuttle's crew cabin; that one of the flight helmets recovered had "human tissue and hair" stuck to the inside; that the contents of McAuliffe's locker were recovered along with her Teacher in Space experiments; that Resnik's makeup kit was found; that the crew cabin had ruptured in flight and the astronauts were strewn across the seabed. None of the rumors about the astronauts' bodies made it into print or on the air except in the most qualified of terms.

[Miho]

K I promise I'll stop now

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078060/

[RubySlippers]

Ask, and you shall recieve...

BC-Columbia Astronauts, 2nd Ld-Writethru,0977
NASA reports graphic details of Columbia deaths
Eds: Updates thruout, adds byline, photos, Web link to report; NASA
briefing set for 4 p.m. EST.
AP Photo NY112, NY115, NY116, NY113, NY111
AP Graphic COLUMBIA REPORT
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Seat restraints, pressure suits and helmets of
the doomed crew of the space shuttle Columbia didn't work well,
leading to "lethal trauma" as the out-of-control ship lost
pressure and broke apart, killing all seven astronauts, a new NASA
report says.
essurization or from hitting something as the
spacecraft spun violently out of control. The report said it wasn't
clear which of those events killed them.
And in the case of the helmets and other gear, three crew
members weren't wearing gloves, which provide crucial protection
from depressurization. One wasn't in the seat, one wasn't wearing a
helmet and several were not fully strapped in. The gloves were off
because they are too bulky to do certain tasks and there is too
little time to prepare for re-entry, the report notes.
Had all those procedures been followed, the astronauts might
have lived longer and been able to take more actions, but they
still wouldn't have survived, the report says.
The new report comes five years after an independent
investigation panel issued its own exhaustive e
moon and Mars, said Clark, who now works for the National Space
Biomedical Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in
Houston.
Kirstie McCool Chadwick, sister of pilot William McCool, said a
copy of the report arrived at her Florida home by FedEx Tuesday
morning but that she had not read it.
"We've moved on," Chadwick said. "I'll read it. But it's
private. It's our business ... Our family has moved on from the
accident and we don't want to reopen wounds.
----
Correspondent Mike Schneider in Orlando, Fla., contributed to
this report.
------
On the Net:
The NASA report: http://www.nasa.gov/news/reports/index.html

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
APTV 12-30-08 1432EST

Once again Duster my Love, you do not disappoint.

[Miho]

Apollo One pictures that I have never seen before

http://www.geocities.com/rocket_man_2020/A1_fire.html

[duster]

God I am such a DH :-P

In fact, no clear evidence was ever found that the crew cabin depressurized at all. There was certainly no sudden, catastrophic loss of air of the type that would have knocked the astronauts out within seconds. Such an event would have caused the mid-deck floor to buckle upward; that simply didn't happen.
In any case, they seemed almost weightless at first. Then, as the hurtling cabin reached its terminal velocity, they strained forward, toward the Earth, held in their seats by the webbing straps across their laps and legs and over their shoulders.
The cabin swayed only slightly -- a degree or two each way. Behind it, lengths of wire, hundreds of them, trailed like the tail of a child's kite, helping to stabilize it. They were part of the shuttle's wiring harness.
The free-fall lasted about 2½ minutes. The cabin nose was tilted a little to the right when it hit the ocean, just enough to send the cabin crashing onto its left side. It hit at about 200 miles an hour, fracturing like a bottle dropped onto a concrete pavement, but held together by the thousands of feet of wire that surround the cabin like a kind of high-tech cocoon. The astronauts were torn from their seats and thrown to the left, which was now down. They died instantly, dismembered by the impact.


http://www.lutins.org/nasa.html

That report today says they were unconscious within seconds, b/c the cabin depressurized, and they based that finding on analysis of tissue samples. They also talk about "trauma" to the bodies caused by the fact that the shoulder harnesses didn't hold, but the lap harnesses did, which suggests to me that they were torn in half at the waist. But that's just me

[Miho]

That report today says they were unconscious within seconds, b/c the cabine depressurized, and they based that finding on analysis of tissue samples. They also talk about "trauma" to the bodies caused by the fact that the shoulder harnesses didn't hold, but the lap harnesses did, which suggests to me that they were torn in half at the waist. But that's just me

Ooopsie super sorry I should have clarified. Those above articles were Challenger not Columbia.

[RubySlippers]

That report today says they were unconscious within seconds, b/c the cabine depressurized, and they based that finding on analysis of tissue samples. They also talk about "trauma" to the bodies caused by the fact that the shoulder harnesses didn't hold, but the lap harnesses did, which suggests to me that they were torn in half at the waist. But that's just me

ohmigoshness

[Danny62]

Seat restraints, pressure suits and helmets of the doomed crew of the space shuttle Columbia didn't work well, leading to "lethal trauma" as the out-of-control ship lost pressure and broke apart, killing all seven astronauts, a new NASA report says. At least one crew member was alive and pushing buttons for half a minute after a first loud alarm sounded, as he futilely tried to right Columbia during that disastrous day Feb. 1, 2003.

In fact, by that time, there was nothing anyone could have done to survive as the fatally damaged shuttle streaked across Texas to a landing in Florida what would never take place.

But NASA scrutinizes the final minutes of the shuttle tragedy in a new 400-page report released Tuesday. The agency hopes to help engineers design a new shuttle replacement capsule more capable of surviving an accident. An internal NASA team recommends 30 changes based on Columbia, many of them aimed at pressurization suits, helmets and seatbelts.

As was already known, the astronauts died either from lack of oxygen during depressurization or from hitting something as the spacecraft spun violently out of control. The report said it wasn't clear which of those events killed them.

And in the case of the helmets and other gear, three crew members weren't wearing gloves, which provide crucial protection from depressurization. One wasn't in the seat, one wasn't wearing a helmet and several were not fully strapped in. The gloves were off because they are too bulky to do certain tasks and there is too little time to prepare for re-entry, the report notes.

Had all those procedures been followed, the astronauts might have lived longer and been able to take more actions, but they still wouldn't have survived, the report says.

The new report comes five years after an independent investigation panel issued its own exhaustive analysis on Columbia, but it focused heavily on the cause of the accident and the culture of NASA.

The new document lists five "events" that were each potentially lethal to the crew: Loss of cabin pressure just before or as the cabin broke up; crew members, unconscious or already dead, crashing into objects in the module; being thrown from their seats and the module; exposure to a near vacuum at 100,000 feet; and hitting the ground.

Columbia disintegrated as it returned to Earth at the end of its space mission. The accident was caused by a hole in the shuttle's left wing from a piece of foam insulation that smashed into it at launch. The breach in the wing brought it down upon its return to Earth. Killed in the disaster were commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon of Israel.
A timeline of what was happening in crew compartment shows that the first loud master alarm â?? from a failure in control jets â?? would have rung at least four seconds before the shuttle went out of control.

Twenty-six seconds later either Husband or McCool â?? in the upper deck with two other astronauts â?? "was conscious and able to respond to events that were occurring on board."

Shortly after that, the crew cabin depressurized, "the first event of lethal potential." That would have caused "loss of consciousness" and lack of oxygen. It took 41 seconds for complete loss of pressure.

Dr. Jonathan Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon whose astronaut wife, Laurel, died aboard Columbia, praised NASA's leadership for releasing the report "even though it says, in some ways, you guys didn't do a great job.
"I guess the thing I'm surprised about, if anything, is that (the report) actually got out," said Clark, who was a member of the team that wrote it. "There were so many forces" that didn't want to produce the report

because it would again put the astronauts' families in the media spotlight.
Some of the recommendations already are being applied to the next-generation spaceship being designed to take astronauts to the moon and Mars, said Clark, who now works for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Kirstie McCool Chadwick, sister of pilot William McCool, said a copy of the report arrived at her Florida home by FedEx Tuesday morning but that she had not read it.

"We've moved on," Chadwick said. "I'll read it. But it's private. It's our business ... Our family has moved on from the accident and we don't want to reopen wounds

[Tracyb24]

they were torn in half at the waist.

Damn! Poor people.

[Lisamarie]

wow!!! That is so freakin scary! That goes in my top ten list of most terrifying ways to die.......

[TheMysterian]

How tragic and sad,they can get people to the moon and back and yet they can't save them before orbit.

[RubySlippers]

there's already a thread...

[Mintgiver]

Isn't that picture of the Challenger crew?

[Mrs. Watson]

Am I the only one who thinks the more grisly details of these people's death should be redacted?

We know they died a horrific death, and Death Hag or not, I think it's in a bit of poor taste.

I know, I know, I never thought I'd be typing that, either.

[Giada]

For what it's worth ....

I lived in Las Vegas, Nevada between 1993-1998 and met a woman who was an engineer at the test site. She stated to me the inside of the cabin is broadcast internally, (NASA) during shuttle flights.

She said the astronauts were alive during the descent of of the Challenger shuttle, and conscious until they struck water. It was extremely traumatic for those who were viewing the events. I didn't ask for details and saw the stress she suffered simply from mentioning it.

[TheMysterian]

Isn't that picture of the Challenger crew?

You are soooooooooo right! My mistake,thanks!

[Frank 'N' Howie]

Bad way to go no matter who the heck you are...When Challenger went down...I went thorugh every possible scenario in my head...In every situation...No one survives...That would be a BAD way ta go folks...

[TheMysterian]

Columbia crew

[McCourt]

Pieces fell not too far from my house. I think its so sad. Unfortunately, these things have to been public at some point so that those who need to study what went wrong can do so.

[MorbidMolly]

It had to have quick.......the only bad thing is not having much to bury or cremate.....I choose to think they felt nothing.....I have to

[Lita]

Am I the only one who thinks the more grisly details of these people's death should be redacted?

We know they died a horrific death, and Death Hag or not, I think it's in a bit of poor taste.

I know, I know, I never thought I'd be typing that, either.

I'm with you. I understand that people needed to study what happened so they could fix the problem; however, those details could have been released to just those people in charge of fixing the problem and not released to the whole public. Basically all it says is even if everything had been done right after the first thing went wrong, they still would have died. And does the family really need to know that one of the men was still alive for a minute and a half? Can you imagine what the families of the men are thinking? Hoping it wasn't their loved one, hoping it was. Nothing changes the fact that their loved ones died in a pretty graphic way. The families don't need to know specifics.

Giada's story is really sad. I can't imagine what the Challenger crew was thinking or going through.

[Ima Sikfuk]

Thanks for posting this Danny. These are the kinds of things that brought me to the forum.
I can understand why some would wish the grisly details redacted but my take on things is these folks knew the risks and as taxpayers, we paid for this, so we should have a right to as much information as we can get or want. Just my two cents.

[RaRaRamona]

Isn't that picture of the Challenger crew?

LOL I was thinking the same thing. That was funny.

Danny, can you add a link please? Thanks for this. How awful.

[neilmpenny]

Link?

[pattykad]

I don't know what's wrong with me but I didn't think that was THAT
grisly.

How does not wearing your gloves kill a person during
depressurization.....anyone know?