[metmom]

My sister, who was in the Air Force, said she heard rumor the the guys in mission control who heard the screams of the astronauts were never the same. I remember hearing a clip of the astronauts and they said, "There's a fire!" and then it ended abruptly. Shiver. This is one of my two choices on how NOT to go. Drowning's the other. My heart breaks for these people and their relatives.

[PeteB570]

Drownings not as bad as it seems. Those who spend a bunch of time in the water see people drown quite a bit. You black out before you drown. Then a minute or so later you really drown.

I've pulled people out of the pool who were in between. They would be struggling, go limp, drift to the bottom and then we would jump in, bring them up, pump them out and throw them back in. Tell them they needed a bit more work on their technique.

[ariamne]

The Apollo fire was just a real shock to NASA, up to that point the worst thing to happen to America's space program was losing Gus Grissom's Liberty Belle (and I don't mean to diminish the deaths of the guys who died in plane crashes outside of the Space Program, like Charlie Freeman). So I can imagine the trauma effect on the guys at Mission Control. Probably similar to what British colleagues heard on open phones on 9/11 from their Cantor Fitzgerald co-horts at the WTC.

And I'm with you, metmom. I've heard people say that the 9/11 jumpers thought they might survive by jumping. No way. They preferred that death to death by fire. I would have gone with them.

Prayers for these poor people and their loved ones.