You asked — “So what? What the hell would having a helmet on have done? Or gloves? Keep them alive an extra ten seconds?”
In retrospect, we can see that it was catastrophic (as to what happened). However, it could very well have not been catastrophic if it were a different set of circumstances. And so, one must prepare for the possibility of something not being catastrophic but also requiring the survival of the crew in order to do things that can save a ship in a non-catastrophic situation, before it turns into something that can’t be saved.
So, having the knowledge of what needs to be improved can give people more time to do necessary thing to save a ship in the future, on other missions. That’s important to analyze and to know.
That’s what this kind of thing is useful for (in looking at this kind of catastrophic event) — to take care of the future.
makes sense, thanks.
So the H.M.S. Titanic hits an iceberg and sinks, taking lives that could have been saved...if...
Still, ships at sea hit many different types of objects and sink, taking lives to this day...What has been learned???
Having been intimately involved with our space program, and knowing a few of those crew that were killed personally, they, along with a great many of us knew that anything could happen, and those things that could have happened were planned for and procedures written and trained on to counter the problems and risks associated with space travel...
Up to the time that this particular problem which killed them way before the actual point of disaster...
The one thing that glared out before anything else, had they known of the problem, there was actually a fix/plan/procedure for this, had it been detected...
Now that we know that this is a problem, NASA has fixed it even better by taking a closer look at the vehicle to see if those procedures would be necessary to minimize the risk at that point in the flight...
Otherwise, the astronaut corp would dwindle in size if we just kept going without figuring out a few things...