Mishmash Musings

NASA has released a new, detailed report about what likely happened to the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia, which broke apart and disintegrated upon reentry back in 2003. All seven astronauts aboard the vessel were killed in the disaster.

Reports about the 5-year-old incident have been available before now, of course, but the most recent one, which runs some 400 pages, is said to be the most graphic concerning the astronauts’ fate.

Apparently, none of the equipment in the shuttle’s cabin did its job of protecting the passengers, including seat restraints and helmets. As a result, the astronauts’ upper bodies “flailed around”, and their heads were battered inside the helmets.

But the astronauts were already either unconscious or dead at that point, and there’s no way they could have survived the rest of the descent, so any arguments about the equipment are purely academic.

At least the disaster has prompted numerous design and safety overhauls for the next incarnation of NASA spacecraft. Let’s hope we never see another tragic space-related crash again.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.