re: 15 years ago today, we lost the Shuttle Columbia

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Its power source was not in the crew cabin and all power was lost when the cabling was severed as the crew compartment separated from the rest of the orbiter.

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One of the worst parts of this was that the crew on the lower deck (McNair, McAuliffe, and Jarvis) were in a pitch-black room and no way of communicating with the upstairs crew.

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lower deck (McNair, McAuliffe, and Jarvis) were in a pitch-black room and no way of communicating with the upstairs crew.

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I thought they were hypoxic? Hypoxia would have been sweet relief from a couple minute free fall. I’ve heard that the crew were trying to perform some procedures. What? If they were at all trying to steer an aircraft, I assume they were hypoxic as the entire ship was gone?

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I thought they were hypoxic? Hypoxia would have been sweet relief from a couple minute free fall. I’ve heard that the crew were trying to perform some procedures. What? If they were at all trying to steer an aircraft, I assume they were hypoxic as the entire ship was gone?

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The switches the flight deck crew threw were largely associated with the power systems of the spacecraft, so it appears that the flight crew was trying to restore power after the breakup. Further, some of the escape air packs were activated. The air packs wouldn't have helped the crew because they weren't pressurized and were meant only to help on the ground to get out of smoky environments or such, but some of the crew clearly realized they were in a situation where air was going to be dicey.

Some members of the crew were almost certainly fully conscious for at least a few seconds after the vehicle disintegrated. They were at about 48,000 feet when the orbiter broke up. If they were instantly exposed to the atmosphere outside, they'd have about 10 seconds of useful consciousness before hypoxia would take its toll. The loads imposed on them during the breakup were up to 20g for a couple of seconds, then they rapidly fell off. The g-loading wasn't enough to kill them, though it probably blacked some of them out, especially the ones that weren't military. Still, even if the g loading blacked them out, once those died down it's possible they woke back up in the few seconds before hypoxia would put them under. The short story is that it's extremely likely that at least some members of the crew were fully aware of their predicament at least until they blacked out from hypoxia. Conscious or not, it's a near certainty they were all alive until they hit the water.

It took about 25 seconds from the time of breakup for the cabin to reach its highest altitude of about 65,000 feet and start falling back down. They hit the water about two minutes twenty seconds after that. They likely didn't spend enough time at altitude to outright kill them because the entire event from breakup to impact with the ocean took less than 3 minutes, but they'd certainly have been blacked out from hypoxia if they were exposed and it's debatable whether or not they'd ever have woken back up as they fell through thicker air before they were definitely killed on impact.

What's fricking chilling to think of is that the crew cabin is the actual airtight pressure vessel that keeps them alive in the vacuum of space. It was the strongest and most robustly built part of the orbiter. What if its pressure boundary held and they never were fully exposed to the high altitude environment and were alive, awake, and aware inside their crew cabin all the way until impact?

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Yeah, once they were breached they would have lost consciousness almost immediately unless they were on oxygen. There's a reason why people have to acclimatize for high altitudes.

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The Challenger crew cabin separated from the rest of the ship intact - from the bulkhead forward; it didn't fall apart until it hi the sea surface. I don't know how much oxygen was available in it, but there was certainly some. The emergency oxygen tanks for at least three of the astronauts had been activated, and one of those belonged to the pilot, and would have had to have been activated by one of the astronauts sitting behind him.

What's really bad is that challenger was completely preventable. Nasa was warned not to launch but did anyway. To my knowledge no one was ever held accountable

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What's fricking chilling to think of is that the crew cabin is the actual airtight pressure vessel that keeps them alive in the vacuum of space. It was the strongest and most robustly built part of the orbiter. What if its pressure boundary held and they never were fully exposed to the high altitude environment and were alive, awake, and aware inside their crew cabin all the way until impact?

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Even if the air was leaking out, it only took less than 3 minutes for the crew cabin to hit the Atlantic. Definitely rough to think about.