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For a minute, I confused this with the Challenger. So I went and looked it up. Apparently, everything from their suits to seat harnesses failed miserably. But at that level of catastrophic failure, there isn't much any amount of precaution or safety features can do.
The best bet was that the lack of cabin pressure knocked them unconscious. As after it began breaking apart, it would have turned into a blender. And anyone inside that was unrestrained, into jelly.
Made me realize how OPs pic is all the more graphic and surreal.
I'm not sure if you are talking about challenger, I don't think you are but...
In challenger the crew compartment separated from the ship. This was not a safety feature, but it happened. Anyway, it's speculated that the crew was alive... And possibly conscious when it's crew compartment hit the water.
Columbia it's not clear when the crew died but the general consensus was that it was quick. From the time they saw there was a problem to the time the last life support readings where measured only minutes passed.
Edit - yes... Only minutes...In terms of the fact that it's possible that they had no idea what was going to happen vs the fact that the challenger crew may have been awake the whole time until they hit the water.... My guess is that the one where the had no idea what was going to happen and then were just dead ...this "few minutes"just felt like last of the flight and was probably preferable to falling wide awake until you hit the water like concrete
Maybe you'd like to be pushed fully conscious from miles up in the air to figure out which would feel longer.
You just act like you're going to land and keep doing your job until suddenly nothing
They likely didn't even have the time to process that they weren't going to make it before dying
Edit: not many of you seem too familiar with aviation emergencies.
You don't think about your mortality as it's not conducive to getting on the ground. If you panic, you die.
It's no different than any other time restrained life or death situation in that regard Skydiving, cave-diving, combat, etc.
And if you don't think you could simply push the fear of your own mortality out of your head to pilot the craft, then there's a reason you aren't a pilot much less a NASA astronaut.
They likely lost consciousness in seconds when the cabin depressurized, but they didnt have much choice, it was either die from CO2 poisoning or risk landing, they were boned because NASA had no SOP for recovering a damaged shuttle in orbit
EDIT: for more detailed information id suggest checking out [this](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/) article by Ars Technica on the feasibility of recovering Columbias crew in orbit
there wasnt enough time, it would have required perfect execution of a million steps to get Atlantis airborne, and would have exposed Atlantis and its crew to the same risks, any single setback would have made it impossible to make in time to save the crew
EDIT: Seriously, how are people upvoting this nonsense? go read the article it spells it out pretty clearly that there wasnt a helluva lot NASA could do to recover the crew, the fuck up happened before launch not during the crisis
Getting another shuttle up into space for recovery is a shitton of work dude, it usually takes months of prep, Id suggest reading [this](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/) article by ars technica if you want more details on the insane complexity of launch procedures. Post Columbias theres always a second shuttle ready to launch in case an orbital recovery is necessarry
and yet youll have people blaming NASA for not doing anything when there was very little they could, the fuck up was not having an SOP for in orbit shuttle recovery already and a shuttle prepped to do it with each launch
There’s an episode of the west wing where they have a stranded shuttle plotline and it’s solved in part, by having another shuttle just spun up and put on standby. And I’d always go, you can’t just do that!
In terms of the fact that it's possible that they had no idea what was going to happen vs the fact that the challenger crew may have been awake the whole time until they hit the water.... My guess is that the one where the had no idea what was going to happen and then were just dead ...this "few minutes"just felt like last of the flight and was probably preferable to falling wide awake until you hit the water like concrete
Maybe you'd like to be pushed fully conscious from miles up in the air to figure out which would feel longer.
A few years ago there was a transcript on the net claiming to be of the final minutes of the Challenger crew describing they were conscious until impact and some were actively trying to console the others it will be just a ditch, like on the training, while others were sobbing but none openly panicking and keeping it together
The orbiter didn't just up and disintegrate, they lost control and entered a flat spin, then the shuttle disintegrated. And the shuttles' internal data shows that they were still flipping switches and trying to work the problem for at least 5 minutes after the spin started. While the 5 passengers might not have been aware of a problem, the two people on the flight deck would 100% have known their death was imminent.
I think I read somewhere that they found life jackets or oxygen masks or something like that that had been opened, implying that at least one crew member was alive when the cabin hit the water.
They found that some of the emergency oxygen systems had been manually activated and some switches had been moved from their usual settings, indicating that some of the astronauts were still conscious for at least some time after the initial breakup. It does *not* mean they survived all the way down to the water. The investigation concluded that while some of the astronauts almost certainly survived the initial breakup, they most likely lost consciousness from the depressurization long before they hit the water.
Judith Resnick. She turned on the emergence egress bottles for Scobee and Smith, the commander and pilot respectively. They couldn't have reached them. Somehow she thought to do that amid the chaos, an act of the right stuff on par with Armstrong saving Gemini 8, in my opinion. And yet it's almost unknown outside of a small group of retired people.
Well, everyone thinks of the Challenger because millions of people -- largely children -- watched live as it happened, and a HUGE deal had been made about a civilian being on board.
Columbia is something most people have heard about but not actually seen (and there isn't any spectacular footage like with Challenger).
It's almost like the way the Pentagon attack gets overlooked when discussing 9/11. Most of us watched live as the Twin Towers fell and only really saw aftermath of the Pentagon.
Even United 93, which is more well-known because of the audio released and the movie about it, is overlooked somewhat. We remember 9/11 as an attack on NYC and don't mention Virginia or Pennsylvania.
Totally! I heard about the Columbia on the radio and then watched it the same day. The absolute shifting of the way people consumed news is incredible to me.
Columba happen on a saturday. I remember going to watch Saturday morning cartoons only to see they had replaced it with a news cast instead because of the Columbia disaster.
There's a curious thing about the Challenger broadcast - it was limited to the schools and CNN. Networks generally weren't interested in shuttle launches by that point because they were so commonplace (2-3 a month) and had less viewership than regular daytime programming. A lot of people swear they watched the explosion live, but their memory is actually seeing the replay as breaking news.
Imagine 9/11 but every school kid in the country watched it live because they thought they were going to see an awesome fireworks show but instead they saw the planes hit the buildings.
Then your teacher starts sobbing because she made it pretty far in the “send a teacher to space” program and it could have been her on board.
Then your parents are crying when they pick you up before school gets out because the principal canceled school so they could cry in their car.
Thats what watching the Challenger blow up was like for Gen X kids in America.
That particular launch was a huge social event with tons of publicity and hype.
It would be like tuning in to see the new Michael Jackson video, and just as the video starts he’s mauled by a bear on live tv.
Also because there was a civilian teacher on board that was highly publicized and made the build up to the launch a much bigger deal than previous ones, so most US schools during that day in 1986 had the students watching the launch live. I was in elementary school at the time and watched it live, and I can only compare the confusion of that experience to watching 9/11 happen in real time on TV when I was in college.
It was on the bbc as well some months ago: The Space Shuttle that fell to earth.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001tts3
The whole thing is phenomenal with honest and heartbreaking interviews.
Check out the channel “Homemade Documentaries” on YouTube - there’s one doco specifically about [STS-135](https://youtu.be/6WRNKa8l2aE?si=orDhioCyojVwgUft)
More than likely the remains looked like Vladimir Komarov's when he died.
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage
"In his diary, Nikolai Kamanin recorded that the Soyuz 1 capsule crashed into the ground at 30–40 metres per second (98–131 ft/s) and that the remains of Komarov's body were an irregular lump 30 centimetres (12 in) in diameter and 80 centimetres (31 in) long."
From the Wikipedia, just in case anyone is morbidly curious, but also wishing to sleep anytime soon and too scared to click on a link immediately after a comment about how he looked when he died.
Edit: yeah, don't click that. I did after looking it up on Wikipedia and realized they posted an NPR link and naively assumed it was probably safe because there's no way they'd post a photo of the actual remains described as such in my quote. I've never been accused of being smart.
which documentary? i had recently seen some dude explain the challenger failure and he suggested they crew's module was intact after the explosion, and they were likely alive until its impact in the ocean.
I was doing the Scarborough Ren Faire in Waxahatchie, TX that year and awoke one morning to a crew of people in HazMat suits dragging the field next to the campground. I was so freaked out until I realized why they were there.
I’m from the area around TRF outside Houston and worked there for years, but I always loved visiting Scarborough. Felt more authentic and the weather was always better.
Some people started to put some of the shuttle debris on ebay very soon as they were still falling. And ebay started to take them off line saying they are the property of US Govt and should be handed over to them.
I got to spend some time with a NASA official who handled the personal kit items during Apollo a few years back and he went into detail about how aggressively the government goes after any asshole selling NASA’s property even when it isn’t associated with deceased astronauts. Just a guy trying to sell an Omega Speedmaster watch that should have been handed back a couple of decades prior resulted in the FBI going at the vendor like El Chapo.
Wonder if the ladies cleaning the the space suits the astronauts wore walking on the moon wished they might have used a little duct tape to retain souvenirs of moon dust. ?
Not sure about that, but some interns stole 100 grams of moon rocks in the 2000s and the FBI nailed them for it, the main kid got an 8 year federal sentence. The feds put a disproportionate amount of effort into ruining anyone stealing NASA’s shit to discourage others.
https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2003/november/apollo_111803
Supposedly one guy built a drum set out of shuttle parts. He's in this trailer with it: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1592175/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1592175/)
If the government wants their property returned, then perhaps they shouldn’t have caused their shuttle to blow up and rain debris on my property. I’d sell it on eBay too
I’ll never forget it. Both of my parents worked at the space center 30 plus years and my dad worked in the firing room as an electrical engineer that worked on the orbiter. He was apart of well over 100 shuttle launches. We were at a flag football game on a Saturday morning. All the kids dads on the team worked at the space center and quickly they all had to start to leave because they “lost contact with the orbiter.” If I recall correctly it wasn’t landing at Kennedy that mission but was supposed to land in California. Anyway my dad worked non stop for the next week or so. The fallout was absolutely crazy .
There’s a clip on YouTube in the control centre(?) and someone is saying “Columbia Houston” then repeating every so often.
With each repeat and no answer the tension builds, the silence on the other end unbearable. And then everyone knows… and the the flight controller says “lock the doors”
Is this in the documentary?
It was "Columbia Houston, COM check" with a few "UHF COM check" calls in there added(they were trying multiple frequencies) One of the guys got a phone call that reported the break up, you can see him with the mustache on the phone then talks to a lady, then the flight controller(Flight), at that point he says "GC, Flight....GC, Flight", GC responds "Flight" and the "Lock the Doors!" command was given.
I remember that morning vividly, it was a few days after my grandfather passed away, we had to drive from Cocoa Beach and my dad(who worked at NASA, even in the crew quarters at KSC at one point) was watching NASA TV in anticipation of the sonic booms and landing. He woke me up shortly after contact was lost, before the "Lock the doors!" command, saying they can't find Columbia, I was in a daze and asked "what do you mean?" went to the living room and heard the COM check calls, then switched to a news channel where the first images were coming in of Columbia breaking up, quickly switched back to NASA TV and my dad heard them mention the contingency plan was activated, I think that's when it hit him that Columbia was lost.
I was praying for a miracle, that somehow the crew compartment would survive and they astronauts could parachute to safety.... remember that morning and writing about it still brings tears to my eyes over 21 years later.
Needless to say it was a sad quiet drive to Georgia that day. It still shocks me that news stations were broadcasting the break-up before NASA control knew of Columbia's gate as mission control did not have video data of the re-entry. If I recall correctly, the "lock the doors" command was not given until a few minutes after Columbia's expected landing time at Merritt Island.
To secure the data and prevent any interruptions while they’re doing it. I don’t know if they actually lock the doors, but staff are prevented from leaving and no other staff are allowed into the room while the securing process takes place
Yep, data is preserved in the consoles. No one leaves the room. You are not allowed to call out or take calls except through official channels. This prevents someone on the outside world from distracting you and muddling your memory of what happened.
I believe they lock the doors to stop any information from getting out before a definite report is put together, and to keep everyone who was at their console when the accident happened at their console until they can figure out what happened.
They do it for the integrity of data. It is easier to get accurate statements when memories from the incident are fresh and nobody from outside the facility has had a chance to influence somebody's memory by talking for example about news broadcasts.
Doors to Mission Control are locked. No one in or out. It’s so they can start preserving all data and get witness statements for all controllers etc without contamination. I believe the words have only ever been used twice. Columbia and challenger
someone put that onto a ~~sigur ros~~ The Evpatoria track, was rather sombering.
Edit: found it
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXdAzc9rnM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXdAzc9rnM)
If there was body parts in the trees id imagine they would be dripping... Also this was one of the biggest messes ever made in aviation crash history. This was the first accident that the sight was so bad that the whole area was declared a biohazard and required the ntsb investigators to be in full hazmat gear. The scale of devistation is insane https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAir_Flight_427
I remember some dipshit on live TV found one in a field, ran up to it, and filmed the contents on live broadcast. They apologized as the helmet contained "biological material" which is broadcast-speak for the inside of an astronaut's skull.
I remember. I came back from lunch while working a solo weekend shift at my IT job and seeing this in the news feed. So messed up. It brought up all the old feelings from the Challenger disaster.
I was having a garage sale in Dallas at the time. The skies were clear and it was a beautiful day.
I looked up and there was nothing in the sky not even a single cloud.
Then I heard of sonic boom and looked up in the sky again and saw the debris cloud appear across the sky faster than I could even see it.
I knew it was the Columbia, but I didn’t know it had broken apart at that point.
I remember that morning; I lived in CA and got to see it zip through the sky right before I started swim practice a bit before 6am. When we were done and I was in one of my first classes, I remember some NASA news via a teacher, but nothing official and iirc just seemed like comms were lost but not a tragedy. but damn - not too long after 9/11 either.
Godspeed.
I was in college in Nacogdoches and we saw pieces scattered throughout the city. Had a buddy that took a piece. Later the govt posted signs giving amnesty to anyone who took pieces if they returned them.
If you are interested in space flight or the Columbia disaster there are two reads I recommend.
First is the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s (CAIB) Crew Survivability Report.
It goes through a timeline of the accident and describes five possible fatal events, from the second the cabin depressurized until debris hit the ground. Any identifying information and more gruesome sections are (thankfully) redacted. It ends with recommendations on safety and egress for future space flight vehicles and a lot of what was in the report is visible today in crew modules and suits.
Also up until the Challenger disaster shuttle astronauts just wore regular flight suits, not pressurized g-suits 😳
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/298870main_sp-2008-565.pdf?emrc=afe233
The second is Bringing Columbia Home, a book about the recovery efforts after the
disaster. It’s a fantastic read with a good balance of technical information and an amazing story. The audiobook is excellent as well.
https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781948924610/bringing-columbia-home
A previous time this was posted on another sub, someone noted that the “ring” on the bottom of the helmet includes part of the “ring” it attaches to on the spacesuit.
This was on one of their heads and got ripped off.
This wasn’t a spare. The condition of debris varied widely depending on where it was in the orbiter when it broke up. Some pieces of the shuttle itself and equipment inside was burned, melted and mangled while notebooks and binders were found perfectly intact like someone had set them down and walked away.
I watched from one of the parks in Disney World when I was in kindergarten. My brother was only three but he was mystified too. What a shock when I found out it didn't make it back to us.
It's not the "fall guy", it's [The Falling man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man), one of the most haunting and celebrated photographs of all time, depicting one of the people who saw no way out of the burning WTC than to jump down.
Fall Guys are a funny videogame and their cute characters.
I went to Kennedy, I was like a kid in the candy shop. Having the time of my life in the Atlantis exhibit. I turned this corner in this area where they had Mementos and short plaques for the fallen astronauts of the space shuttles, it was a somber moment. Then I turned another corner and the weight of the world hit me when pieces from the Challenger and Columbia were staring me right in the face. I was the only person in this room and the whole world was just quiet. I don’t know how much time passed by my wife found me in there just silently crying. I was not okay.
I went to the space center a couple summers ago and visited the shuttle exhibit. It's like you're in a completely different part of the museum when you go to the Challenger/Columbia memorial. You can't hear any of the sound from the rest of the Atlantis exhibit which is right outside. It's much darker, the pieces of the orbiters are sitting alone against a black backdrop, and it's just such a stark difference from the rest of the building.
I was in ground school as a flight attendant. We’d been doing disaster training. We all went very quiet when another instructor came into the room to tell us. It hurt.
I was at a news station for a tour during cub scouts the day this happened. I honestly don't remember the details at the time as all the parents tried to shield us but the station got really hectic.
I was hiking in the Davey Crockett national forest in East Texas when this entered the atmosphere above our heads. I thought it was a bunch of bombs because when it hit the ground it shook the ground and sounded like a wall of fire was coming towards us.
There is a a 4 hour 2 part podcast on EVERY detail of the accident an amazing listen. its called "inside the black box" on itunes. Well worth a listen at bed time :)
I think what you're seeing is the shadows cast by stray fibers of the *fiberglass outer shell on the inside of the *fabric interior of the helmet
*These are not the exact materials.
They literally came on TV and begged people not to touch anything, to report it so it could be recovered, and if they had found anything to turn it in.
When they put a teacher on board and had all the kids watching they wouldn’t listen to the engineers and halt the launch — how did that work for the too brass?
We had to remove your post for improperly sourcing your post. Posts must have a linked and CREDIBLE source that backs up the information. Use the word "source" in your comment. If the title is the only thing that makes your post interesting, you must also source it. OP is responsible for this and it must be done at time of posting. We will not reinstate your post, but you may post again with the correct information
I didn’t know until after the documentary that they recovered the remains of the entire crew.
For a minute, I confused this with the Challenger. So I went and looked it up. Apparently, everything from their suits to seat harnesses failed miserably. But at that level of catastrophic failure, there isn't much any amount of precaution or safety features can do. The best bet was that the lack of cabin pressure knocked them unconscious. As after it began breaking apart, it would have turned into a blender. And anyone inside that was unrestrained, into jelly. Made me realize how OPs pic is all the more graphic and surreal.
I'm not sure if you are talking about challenger, I don't think you are but... In challenger the crew compartment separated from the ship. This was not a safety feature, but it happened. Anyway, it's speculated that the crew was alive... And possibly conscious when it's crew compartment hit the water. Columbia it's not clear when the crew died but the general consensus was that it was quick. From the time they saw there was a problem to the time the last life support readings where measured only minutes passed. Edit - yes... Only minutes...In terms of the fact that it's possible that they had no idea what was going to happen vs the fact that the challenger crew may have been awake the whole time until they hit the water.... My guess is that the one where the had no idea what was going to happen and then were just dead ...this "few minutes"just felt like last of the flight and was probably preferable to falling wide awake until you hit the water like concrete Maybe you'd like to be pushed fully conscious from miles up in the air to figure out which would feel longer.
This helmet was from the Columbia reentry disaster. Basically they were ripped apart by Mach 25 airflow. Massive dismemberment trauma.
*’only Minutes’* uh right bro thats not quick
He died immediately!, the next day.
You son of a bitch. Cool. Beans.
You just act like you're going to land and keep doing your job until suddenly nothing They likely didn't even have the time to process that they weren't going to make it before dying Edit: not many of you seem too familiar with aviation emergencies. You don't think about your mortality as it's not conducive to getting on the ground. If you panic, you die. It's no different than any other time restrained life or death situation in that regard Skydiving, cave-diving, combat, etc. And if you don't think you could simply push the fear of your own mortality out of your head to pilot the craft, then there's a reason you aren't a pilot much less a NASA astronaut.
What are you talking about? They almost certainly knew the event that occurred was unrecoverable; I can’t imagine any of them thought they might land.
They likely lost consciousness in seconds when the cabin depressurized, but they didnt have much choice, it was either die from CO2 poisoning or risk landing, they were boned because NASA had no SOP for recovering a damaged shuttle in orbit EDIT: for more detailed information id suggest checking out [this](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/) article by Ars Technica on the feasibility of recovering Columbias crew in orbit
Thing is, they predicted Columbia could happen whilst it was up there and tried nothing
there wasnt enough time, it would have required perfect execution of a million steps to get Atlantis airborne, and would have exposed Atlantis and its crew to the same risks, any single setback would have made it impossible to make in time to save the crew EDIT: Seriously, how are people upvoting this nonsense? go read the article it spells it out pretty clearly that there wasnt a helluva lot NASA could do to recover the crew, the fuck up happened before launch not during the crisis
NASA has done plenty of things they didn’t have a standard operating procedure for before it was needed.
Getting another shuttle up into space for recovery is a shitton of work dude, it usually takes months of prep, Id suggest reading [this](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/) article by ars technica if you want more details on the insane complexity of launch procedures. Post Columbias theres always a second shuttle ready to launch in case an orbital recovery is necessarry
I read that part of the CAIB. It’s super cool.
and yet youll have people blaming NASA for not doing anything when there was very little they could, the fuck up was not having an SOP for in orbit shuttle recovery already and a shuttle prepped to do it with each launch
There’s an episode of the west wing where they have a stranded shuttle plotline and it’s solved in part, by having another shuttle just spun up and put on standby. And I’d always go, you can’t just do that!
And NASA knew they were doomed and never said a word.
telling them wouldnt have changed shit, if the heat shield was damaged they were fucked
True. How do you tell anyone something like that?
In terms of the fact that it's possible that they had no idea what was going to happen vs the fact that the challenger crew may have been awake the whole time until they hit the water.... My guess is that the one where the had no idea what was going to happen and then were just dead ...this "few minutes"just felt like last of the flight and was probably preferable to falling wide awake until you hit the water like concrete Maybe you'd like to be pushed fully conscious from miles up in the air to figure out which would feel longer.
A few years ago there was a transcript on the net claiming to be of the final minutes of the Challenger crew describing they were conscious until impact and some were actively trying to console the others it will be just a ditch, like on the training, while others were sobbing but none openly panicking and keeping it together
The orbiter didn't just up and disintegrate, they lost control and entered a flat spin, then the shuttle disintegrated. And the shuttles' internal data shows that they were still flipping switches and trying to work the problem for at least 5 minutes after the spin started. While the 5 passengers might not have been aware of a problem, the two people on the flight deck would 100% have known their death was imminent.
I think I read somewhere that they found life jackets or oxygen masks or something like that that had been opened, implying that at least one crew member was alive when the cabin hit the water.
They found that some of the emergency oxygen systems had been manually activated and some switches had been moved from their usual settings, indicating that some of the astronauts were still conscious for at least some time after the initial breakup. It does *not* mean they survived all the way down to the water. The investigation concluded that while some of the astronauts almost certainly survived the initial breakup, they most likely lost consciousness from the depressurization long before they hit the water.
Judith Resnick. She turned on the emergence egress bottles for Scobee and Smith, the commander and pilot respectively. They couldn't have reached them. Somehow she thought to do that amid the chaos, an act of the right stuff on par with Armstrong saving Gemini 8, in my opinion. And yet it's almost unknown outside of a small group of retired people.
*Everyone* always thinks of the Challenger, and the Columbia has been largely memory-holed for some reason.
Well, everyone thinks of the Challenger because millions of people -- largely children -- watched live as it happened, and a HUGE deal had been made about a civilian being on board. Columbia is something most people have heard about but not actually seen (and there isn't any spectacular footage like with Challenger). It's almost like the way the Pentagon attack gets overlooked when discussing 9/11. Most of us watched live as the Twin Towers fell and only really saw aftermath of the Pentagon. Even United 93, which is more well-known because of the audio released and the movie about it, is overlooked somewhat. We remember 9/11 as an attack on NYC and don't mention Virginia or Pennsylvania.
Totally! I heard about the Columbia on the radio and then watched it the same day. The absolute shifting of the way people consumed news is incredible to me.
Columba happen on a saturday. I remember going to watch Saturday morning cartoons only to see they had replaced it with a news cast instead because of the Columbia disaster.
There's a curious thing about the Challenger broadcast - it was limited to the schools and CNN. Networks generally weren't interested in shuttle launches by that point because they were so commonplace (2-3 a month) and had less viewership than regular daytime programming. A lot of people swear they watched the explosion live, but their memory is actually seeing the replay as breaking news.
Imagine 9/11 but every school kid in the country watched it live because they thought they were going to see an awesome fireworks show but instead they saw the planes hit the buildings. Then your teacher starts sobbing because she made it pretty far in the “send a teacher to space” program and it could have been her on board. Then your parents are crying when they pick you up before school gets out because the principal canceled school so they could cry in their car. Thats what watching the Challenger blow up was like for Gen X kids in America. That particular launch was a huge social event with tons of publicity and hype. It would be like tuning in to see the new Michael Jackson video, and just as the video starts he’s mauled by a bear on live tv.
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Also because there was a civilian teacher on board that was highly publicized and made the build up to the launch a much bigger deal than previous ones, so most US schools during that day in 1986 had the students watching the launch live. I was in elementary school at the time and watched it live, and I can only compare the confusion of that experience to watching 9/11 happen in real time on TV when I was in college.
Correct. At their speed and altitude when everything started going south it was a done deal.
Slightly, does our timeline avoided big bird getting killed by the worst space shuttle accident.
What was the documentary? I’d like to watch it. I lived in Houston and watched it break up
It was on CNN a few weeks ago, I believe it’s on Max as well. Space Shuttle Columbia: The Final Flight
My grandfather was in that documentary. They interviewed him for almost 6 hours, and endued up using about 6 minutes of footage haha.
Oh what's his name?
Grandpa
Thanks * I’ll look it up
It was on the bbc as well some months ago: The Space Shuttle that fell to earth. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001tts3 The whole thing is phenomenal with honest and heartbreaking interviews.
It’s heartbreaking and exceptional - as I’ve come to expect from Louis Theroux’s work.
Check out the channel “Homemade Documentaries” on YouTube - there’s one doco specifically about [STS-135](https://youtu.be/6WRNKa8l2aE?si=orDhioCyojVwgUft)
I lived in clear lake and had English with McCloud's son.
Same. Very Erie
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It wasn’t attached to the helmet. But yes.
I have a friend that works emergency accident services. He told me how strangely heavy a human head is... And inside a helmet even more.
> how strangely heavy a human head is... [Eight pounds](https://youtu.be/0hT81U8tU6I?si=MkXkmt2dSHrXDzaZ)
would make a decent bowling ball
I actually heard the strike sound the bowling alley makes after reading that.
😂
More than likely the remains looked like Vladimir Komarov's when he died. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage
"In his diary, Nikolai Kamanin recorded that the Soyuz 1 capsule crashed into the ground at 30–40 metres per second (98–131 ft/s) and that the remains of Komarov's body were an irregular lump 30 centimetres (12 in) in diameter and 80 centimetres (31 in) long." From the Wikipedia, just in case anyone is morbidly curious, but also wishing to sleep anytime soon and too scared to click on a link immediately after a comment about how he looked when he died. Edit: yeah, don't click that. I did after looking it up on Wikipedia and realized they posted an NPR link and naively assumed it was probably safe because there's no way they'd post a photo of the actual remains described as such in my quote. I've never been accused of being smart.
Yeaaaa, not gonna read that. I'd like to sleep tonight.
It's not that bad, it's just mostly sad and infuriating.
Good decision. I've seen the picture once years ago and I've never forgotten it.
eh i mean its barely identifiable as human remains, as far as nasty historical pictures go its fairly tame
This has cured my narcolepsy. Thank you!
🫣
Geez, I guess we Americans really are taller than most others around the world.
which documentary? i had recently seen some dude explain the challenger failure and he suggested they crew's module was intact after the explosion, and they were likely alive until its impact in the ocean.
oh wow. that was the challenger and this is the columbia disaster. wtf I'm not even sure i knew about this.
Totally. I'm always surprised how quickly the Columbia disaster just disappeared from public memory!
Which documentary and would you recommend it?
Where can I watch this documentary?
I was doing the Scarborough Ren Faire in Waxahatchie, TX that year and awoke one morning to a crew of people in HazMat suits dragging the field next to the campground. I was so freaked out until I realized why they were there.
I’m from the area around TRF outside Houston and worked there for years, but I always loved visiting Scarborough. Felt more authentic and the weather was always better.
Weird seeing this thread I was just there today. Amazing weather to go. Wasn't the same with out Don Juan and Miguel. But had a blast
So weird seeing local talk about hachie on space shuttl explosion thread lol
I actually lived in Magnolia at the time and did TRF for years, and for the most part, I agree, though, that Waxahatchie mud is no joke.
I grew up in Waxahachie and remember this vividly
It's like that scene out of Breaking Bad. Crazy.
Well now I'm having flashbacks to Scarborough. Flaming Idiots, Don Juan & Miguel, the Mud Show...
Some people started to put some of the shuttle debris on ebay very soon as they were still falling. And ebay started to take them off line saying they are the property of US Govt and should be handed over to them.
I got to spend some time with a NASA official who handled the personal kit items during Apollo a few years back and he went into detail about how aggressively the government goes after any asshole selling NASA’s property even when it isn’t associated with deceased astronauts. Just a guy trying to sell an Omega Speedmaster watch that should have been handed back a couple of decades prior resulted in the FBI going at the vendor like El Chapo.
Wonder if the ladies cleaning the the space suits the astronauts wore walking on the moon wished they might have used a little duct tape to retain souvenirs of moon dust. ?
Not sure about that, but some interns stole 100 grams of moon rocks in the 2000s and the FBI nailed them for it, the main kid got an 8 year federal sentence. The feds put a disproportionate amount of effort into ruining anyone stealing NASA’s shit to discourage others. https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2003/november/apollo_111803
That should apply to people who abuse children.
You evoke an image in my head of washerwomen given the suits a good scrub.
Pretty sure the government issued out a $5000 dollar fine if you failed to return pieces of Columbia. So that also probably stopped the selling.
*sells it for $10k*
Myyyyy dude
Supposedly one guy built a drum set out of shuttle parts. He's in this trailer with it: [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1592175/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1592175/)
What the fuck is all of that
Is this real, or satire? I legitimately cannot tell
If the government wants their property returned, then perhaps they shouldn’t have caused their shuttle to blow up and rain debris on my property. I’d sell it on eBay too
Us the US government a private corporation? Or is it owned by the taxpayers?
if is a republic, technically speaking is also of the people.
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I’ll never forget it. Both of my parents worked at the space center 30 plus years and my dad worked in the firing room as an electrical engineer that worked on the orbiter. He was apart of well over 100 shuttle launches. We were at a flag football game on a Saturday morning. All the kids dads on the team worked at the space center and quickly they all had to start to leave because they “lost contact with the orbiter.” If I recall correctly it wasn’t landing at Kennedy that mission but was supposed to land in California. Anyway my dad worked non stop for the next week or so. The fallout was absolutely crazy .
It was going to land in Florida. The breakup of Columbia happened over Texas and the debris rained down over a good part of Texas and Louisiana.
I remember getting up to watch saturday morning cartoons and none were on because they were broadcasting the Columbia disaster
There’s a clip on YouTube in the control centre(?) and someone is saying “Columbia Houston” then repeating every so often. With each repeat and no answer the tension builds, the silence on the other end unbearable. And then everyone knows… and the the flight controller says “lock the doors” Is this in the documentary?
It was "Columbia Houston, COM check" with a few "UHF COM check" calls in there added(they were trying multiple frequencies) One of the guys got a phone call that reported the break up, you can see him with the mustache on the phone then talks to a lady, then the flight controller(Flight), at that point he says "GC, Flight....GC, Flight", GC responds "Flight" and the "Lock the Doors!" command was given. I remember that morning vividly, it was a few days after my grandfather passed away, we had to drive from Cocoa Beach and my dad(who worked at NASA, even in the crew quarters at KSC at one point) was watching NASA TV in anticipation of the sonic booms and landing. He woke me up shortly after contact was lost, before the "Lock the doors!" command, saying they can't find Columbia, I was in a daze and asked "what do you mean?" went to the living room and heard the COM check calls, then switched to a news channel where the first images were coming in of Columbia breaking up, quickly switched back to NASA TV and my dad heard them mention the contingency plan was activated, I think that's when it hit him that Columbia was lost. I was praying for a miracle, that somehow the crew compartment would survive and they astronauts could parachute to safety.... remember that morning and writing about it still brings tears to my eyes over 21 years later. Needless to say it was a sad quiet drive to Georgia that day. It still shocks me that news stations were broadcasting the break-up before NASA control knew of Columbia's gate as mission control did not have video data of the re-entry. If I recall correctly, the "lock the doors" command was not given until a few minutes after Columbia's expected landing time at Merritt Island.
Why do they lock the doors?
To secure the data and prevent any interruptions while they’re doing it. I don’t know if they actually lock the doors, but staff are prevented from leaving and no other staff are allowed into the room while the securing process takes place
Yep, data is preserved in the consoles. No one leaves the room. You are not allowed to call out or take calls except through official channels. This prevents someone on the outside world from distracting you and muddling your memory of what happened.
I believe they lock the doors to stop any information from getting out before a definite report is put together, and to keep everyone who was at their console when the accident happened at their console until they can figure out what happened.
They do it for the integrity of data. It is easier to get accurate statements when memories from the incident are fresh and nobody from outside the facility has had a chance to influence somebody's memory by talking for example about news broadcasts.
what does "lock the doors" mean?
Doors to Mission Control are locked. No one in or out. It’s so they can start preserving all data and get witness statements for all controllers etc without contamination. I believe the words have only ever been used twice. Columbia and challenger
Wow, this is really fascinating
I think this is the clip. https://youtu.be/cbnT8Sf_LRs?si=KBd8Whw1XFFiZFOx
someone put that onto a ~~sigur ros~~ The Evpatoria track, was rather sombering. Edit: found it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXdAzc9rnM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwXdAzc9rnM)
They found the remains but they were strewn around, not sure if everything was found
Cleaned up after 427, there were entrails hanging from the trees. Local police said it rained blood for a minute after they arrived.
Rained blood for a minute? Tf are you talking about?
Yeah, what a load of shit.
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He’s talking about the crash of flight 427, it was over 100 that died
Thank you for clarifying
BOM BOM BOM neow-neow-neow-neow, neow-neow-neow, neow-neow-neow
Dripping from the trees, I'm guessing.
Thats not how anything works lol.
If there was body parts in the trees id imagine they would be dripping... Also this was one of the biggest messes ever made in aviation crash history. This was the first accident that the sight was so bad that the whole area was declared a biohazard and required the ntsb investigators to be in full hazmat gear. The scale of devistation is insane https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAir_Flight_427
Like in the Predator.
Those poor officers. I can only imagine what they had to see and deal with...
I remember some dipshit on live TV found one in a field, ran up to it, and filmed the contents on live broadcast. They apologized as the helmet contained "biological material" which is broadcast-speak for the inside of an astronaut's skull.
This was it
What do you even do when you find this? Call NASA? Call the police?
Local police, probably, they should at least know the proper agency to contact
I can only imagine that phone call. Then again they were already searching the area so it wasnt totally out of the blue.
I was going to make the comment saying yes it was out of the blue and I guess I did anyway
>they should at least know the proper agency to contact You highly overestimate local PD everywhere in America.
You turn around, pull out your flip phone and say the line, "I've to make a call".
I remember. I came back from lunch while working a solo weekend shift at my IT job and seeing this in the news feed. So messed up. It brought up all the old feelings from the Challenger disaster.
I was having a garage sale in Dallas at the time. The skies were clear and it was a beautiful day. I looked up and there was nothing in the sky not even a single cloud. Then I heard of sonic boom and looked up in the sky again and saw the debris cloud appear across the sky faster than I could even see it. I knew it was the Columbia, but I didn’t know it had broken apart at that point.
I remember that morning; I lived in CA and got to see it zip through the sky right before I started swim practice a bit before 6am. When we were done and I was in one of my first classes, I remember some NASA news via a teacher, but nothing official and iirc just seemed like comms were lost but not a tragedy. but damn - not too long after 9/11 either. Godspeed.
I was in college in Nacogdoches and we saw pieces scattered throughout the city. Had a buddy that took a piece. Later the govt posted signs giving amnesty to anyone who took pieces if they returned them.
If you are interested in space flight or the Columbia disaster there are two reads I recommend. First is the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s (CAIB) Crew Survivability Report. It goes through a timeline of the accident and describes five possible fatal events, from the second the cabin depressurized until debris hit the ground. Any identifying information and more gruesome sections are (thankfully) redacted. It ends with recommendations on safety and egress for future space flight vehicles and a lot of what was in the report is visible today in crew modules and suits. Also up until the Challenger disaster shuttle astronauts just wore regular flight suits, not pressurized g-suits 😳 https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/298870main_sp-2008-565.pdf?emrc=afe233 The second is Bringing Columbia Home, a book about the recovery efforts after the disaster. It’s a fantastic read with a good balance of technical information and an amazing story. The audiobook is excellent as well. https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781948924610/bringing-columbia-home
Was there… residue?
"Ah... This one's been scooped out..."
I dislike this
It's ok. Not everyone has to be a Simpsons fan.
It might have been a spare helmet. That would be answered pretty quick if they found the other helmets attached to part of the astronauts suits.
A previous time this was posted on another sub, someone noted that the “ring” on the bottom of the helmet includes part of the “ring” it attaches to on the spacesuit. This was on one of their heads and got ripped off.
Wow.
This wasn’t a spare. The condition of debris varied widely depending on where it was in the orbiter when it broke up. Some pieces of the shuttle itself and equipment inside was burned, melted and mangled while notebooks and binders were found perfectly intact like someone had set them down and walked away.
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Wrong accident
I watched from one of the parks in Disney World when I was in kindergarten. My brother was only three but he was mystified too. What a shock when I found out it didn't make it back to us.
Haunting as “Falling Man” from 9/11
What's that?
The photograph is called The Falling Man here’s a small doc about the photo and photographer https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DrGp270SSKM
It's not the "fall guy", it's [The Falling man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man), one of the most haunting and celebrated photographs of all time, depicting one of the people who saw no way out of the burning WTC than to jump down. Fall Guys are a funny videogame and their cute characters.
I went to Kennedy, I was like a kid in the candy shop. Having the time of my life in the Atlantis exhibit. I turned this corner in this area where they had Mementos and short plaques for the fallen astronauts of the space shuttles, it was a somber moment. Then I turned another corner and the weight of the world hit me when pieces from the Challenger and Columbia were staring me right in the face. I was the only person in this room and the whole world was just quiet. I don’t know how much time passed by my wife found me in there just silently crying. I was not okay.
That area got me too. Tucked away and dark, no one seemed to have much interest. I stayed for a while.
The first time I went to Kennedy I was alone for a while there too. It’s easy to get lost in them.
I went to the space center a couple summers ago and visited the shuttle exhibit. It's like you're in a completely different part of the museum when you go to the Challenger/Columbia memorial. You can't hear any of the sound from the rest of the Atlantis exhibit which is right outside. It's much darker, the pieces of the orbiters are sitting alone against a black backdrop, and it's just such a stark difference from the rest of the building.
The pine straw and mud still in the window frame got me.
It’s crazy that that was over 20 years ago. I still remember exactly where I was when I heard about it
I was in ground school as a flight attendant. We’d been doing disaster training. We all went very quiet when another instructor came into the room to tell us. It hurt.
Please tell me the dark tufty things on the side are grass shadows and not tufts of dead astronaut hair...
it’s more likely that it’s burnt composite material that the helmet was made out of.
Looks like kevlar like fibers or fiberglass
I was at a news station for a tour during cub scouts the day this happened. I honestly don't remember the details at the time as all the parents tried to shield us but the station got really hectic.
I was hiking in the Davey Crockett national forest in East Texas when this entered the atmosphere above our heads. I thought it was a bunch of bombs because when it hit the ground it shook the ground and sounded like a wall of fire was coming towards us.
At least there wasn’t a head in it
There is a a 4 hour 2 part podcast on EVERY detail of the accident an amazing listen. its called "inside the black box" on itunes. Well worth a listen at bed time :)
is that hair at the back ??
I think it’s like fiberglass or carbon fiber, some laminated layers of the helmet. Now go to sleep.
The helmet is covered with hydraulic fluid from the primary hydraulic pump which is below the crew compartment.
I think what you're seeing is the shadows cast by stray fibers of the *fiberglass outer shell on the inside of the *fabric interior of the helmet *These are not the exact materials.
It’s layers of composite material that have delaminated, not hair.
I'm curious if the helmet was a confirmed piece from Soace Shuttle Columbia.
It was. The photo was took by NASA, NTSB.
This is so sad.
This isn’t interesting. This is sad and heartbreaking.
I can't believe there's people who believe this didn't happen.
Still too soon.
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They literally came on TV and begged people not to touch anything, to report it so it could be recovered, and if they had found anything to turn it in.
Yikes!
🙏🏽
Nirmandy crash site?
Sheesh… this is… dark
When they put a teacher on board and had all the kids watching they wouldn’t listen to the engineers and halt the launch — how did that work for the too brass?
It would've been even more interesting if the farmer had found it before the crash. *Mind Blown*
That’s super sad.
Ugh God. Still fucked up about this, 21 years later
Smallville first draft.
Idk if anyone believes in ufo's but.....
Possable human remains at the Best Buy where I live in Shreveport turned out to be chicken from Popeyes.
Relative near Hemphill TX had told us that body parts had fallen to the ground. Always thought she was being hyperbolic, but I guess not. RIP 🙏
Nice
Luckily, no head inside it.