...for a Minute or So

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board on Tuesday told NASA formally what a lot of the fraternity knew already, or at least strongly suspected: the Columbia astronauts, protected in their capsule, most-likely lived for a minute or so, after their final communications with the ground.

The debris examination of the shuttle pieces, now ongoing in Florida's Kennedy Space Center, is carried on in two distinct areas: the crew capsule area... and everything else. Workers won't talk about what they know... but they know.

MSNBC quotes one anonymous worker as noting, "It's a pretty good container they have the crew in; that's the last part to come apart, just like it was in Challenger. It stayed together for a pretty long time." He continued, speculating that NASA could have done something, if it had recognized the threat the displaced foam had brought: "As we sit there thinking about what they were going through, or what their last thoughts were, it kind of angers you."

Eileen Hawley, a NASA spokeswoman in Houston, told MSNBC, "I am unaware of any announcement that NASA plans to make about how long the crew cabin remained intact."

Sensor readings from instruments in the cabin indicate that conditions there were survivable until 15 seconds after 9AM; the last transmission to Earth was interrupted at 8:59:28.

The news report continued, "Data transmission to the ground continued for 5 more seconds after the [interrupted voice] message, then ceased for 25 seconds, then resumed for two. In those two seconds, data received on the ground (but not analyzed for some days afterward, because it was partly garbled) indicated that the conditions in the cabin were benign."

The recorder onboard kept working for 19 seconds additional, and finally malfunctioned.

FMI: www.nasa.gov