re: 29 years ago today: Space Shuttle Challenger exploded

Not going to read through 9 pages, but I read that the capsule the astronauts were in actually survived the blast and the crew actually plummeted to death while still alive and trying to pull the parachutes on the capsule.

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Not going to read through 9 pages,

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You should scan them because there's some good stuff and good stories in this thread from folks who worked for NASA.

Will do. Trying to avoid repeating a story. I believe they found all members in the capsule in the sea. I'm speaking from pure memory though.

Most likely. I watched a documentary on life board the International Space station. Deployment was 1 year, astronauts must work out 2 hours a day, all bowel movements, ejaculations, heart rates, blood pressure, language, etc. were all tracked and written down for monitoring.

I was in Disney World that day. I was 5 months old, so I don't remember shite.

My dad still talks about it, you could very clearly see the vapor trail going up from Orlando. The rocket went up, then he heard people gathered in one of the restaurants going nuts, "It blew up!"

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I heard that as well. Was the capsule damaged or compromised in any way? G-force plus pressure loss? I assume throughout launch they are fed oxygen through suit. I would hope they passed out. That's a long free fall.

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Don't know. I wouldn't think they would have been fed extra oxygen during launch because in a normal launch they wouldn't need it.

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Launch operations is not my field of expertise, but these are my thoughts on the various comments made in the preceding posts.

The g-forces the crew cabin received during the explosion was probably not too much. The whole vehicle just came apart. Unless there were some rapid rotation associate with the breakup there would have been no significantly increased g-forces involved. It has been established that several astronauts survived long enough to reconfigure switches in the cabin trying to re-establish electrical power.

They were accelerating at several g's when the breakup occurred - the "go for throttle up' occurs when the atmospheric density is thin enough that the main engine can be increased to full power. Up to that point, the engines were throttled down to prevent over-stressing the structure due to atmospheric drag.

The interior of the crew cabin was close to normal air mixture - ever since the Apollo 1 fire, NASA went away from pure oxygen atmosphere in the crew compartments.

The SRBs were still attached when the explosion occurred. As the external tank exploded they were set free and the Range Safety Officer destroyed them within a few seconds to prevent them from reaching an inhabited area. They were normally parachuted back into the ocean after they burned out to be retrieved and re-fitted.

I turned 5 that day. My mom had it on the TV. She turned it off quick. One of my earliest memories.

Crazy that they were alive all the way down.

I remember watching John Glenn go into space on tv at school.

1st grade, 6 years old. Our class was watching it on tv. Still remember that vividly.