NASA releases final report on Columbia tragedy.

[KLA2]

The NASA report found the astronauts knew for about 40 seconds that they did not have control of the shuttle before they likely were knocked unconscious as Columbia broke apart around them.

The report also found that while crew members were wearing their pressurized suits, one astronaut did not have on a helmet, three were not wearing gloves and none lowered the visors before the module lost cabin pressure.

… "the breakup of the crew module ... was not survivable by any currently existing capability."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/12/3 ... index.html

(Is there a salute emoticon?)

They knew what they had signed up for, and that if the worst happened, helmets, suits and gloves would be useless. Still, it reveals a confidence in their craft, since a pressure leak or release of a toxic substance could also be lethal when not fully suited.

[Dragon Star]

I'm glad they were not properly equipped honestly, may have just prolonged actual death. :(

[Arneb]

From the report:

All members of the Columbia crew were highly trained and outstandingly competent. The training regimen that they underwent emphasized systems knowledge and problem resolution through ppropriate analysis of displays and the use of checklists. As was previously stated, unrecoverable conditions are not presented to a shuttle crew during training. It is likely that the STS-107 crew members did not close and lock their visors before cabin depressurization because they were focused on solving the problems that had been presented to them rather than on their own survival. Upon cabin depressurization, a survival situation would be immediately apparent from a physiological perspective. The fact that they still did not close and lock their visors indicates that they were rapidly incapacitated and unable to do so.

A few pages down, they describe how the pilot executed a cunning trick to try to restart the hydraulics system seconds before breakup, when the Shuttle was already careening wildly. They died in the midst of doing what they were experts at doing, with only a fleeting moment of terror before everything was dark. If you have to die early, maybe this is the best way to meet your end...

[troubleagain]

It's a relief to me to know they were not aware and suffering in their last minutes.

[Мастер]

I'm glad they were not properly equipped honestly, may have just prolonged actual death. :(

Well, yea, but I'd rather that they had a spacecraft that didn't suffer a catastrophic failure on average every 125 flights or so (