[telescope115]

I had just finished making breakfast for my dad and was driving home. I turned on the radio to WGN in Chicago. Spike O’dell was talking with someone about waiting for communication from Columbia to resume after reentry, and as time went by he was sounding more worried. After a few minutes there were reports of objects in the sky over Texas, along Columbia’s path for reentry. It became slowly obvious that Columbia and it’s crew weren’t coming home.

I was shocked that this was happening again. Hadn’t we learned anything from Challenger?

[Abathar]

I think the worst part of Columbia was that they knew they were going to die on reentry, but they had only two choices, how they wanted to die.

When engineers saw the leading edge was damaged they know with 99.999% certainty that they were going to lose her during reentry. The crew had to make a decision on the 2 choices, die the slow death of asphyxiation and hypothermia, or ride it out and gamble the .001% chance the leading edge would somehow hold together long enough to get her down.

They made the same choice I would have, but I think I would have considered removing the suit while doing it. Given the options it would have just slowed down and prolonged the inevitable IMHO, best to go fast than taking the time to burn through the layers.