From SPACE.com:
posted: 30 December 2008 12:59 pm ET
By Tariq Malik, Senior Editor

The seven astronauts killed during the 2003 loss of NASA's space shuttle Columbia survived less than a minute after their spacecraft began breaking apart, according to a new report released Tuesday that suggests changes to astronaut training and spacecraft cabin design.

The 400-page "Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report" released today states that Columbia's ill-fated crew had a period of just 40 seconds between the loss of control of their spacecraft and its lethal depressurization in which to act on Feb. 1, 2003.

The crew's response was hampered by delays in donning their re-entry pressure suits, which ultimately would not have saved them during the searing plunge into the atmosphere anyway.

"The Columbia depressurization event occurred so rapidly that the crew members were incapacitated within seconds, before they could configure the suit for full protection from loss of cabin pressure," the report states. "Although circulatory systems functioned for a brief time, the effects of the depressurization were severe enough that the crew could not have regained consciousness. This event was lethal to the crew."

One of Columbia's STS-107 crew members was not wearing a pressure suit helmet and three astronauts had not put on their spacesuit gloves, according to the report. At no point did crew error contribute to the loss of Columbia, which was not a survivable event, the report states.

The design of Columbia's seats, too, decreased the crew's chances of survival as their restraints did not lock in place, subjecting the astronauts to extreme trauma from rotational forces. Their helmets were not head-conforming, resulting in injuries and lethal trauma, the report states.

The new report calls for enhanced astronaut training to help spacecraft crews transition from emergency response to survival mode. It also recommends that NASA design the seats and pressure suits for future spacecraft with loss of vehicle control in mind. Current astronaut pressure suits, for example, require astronauts to manually deploy their parachute during an emergency escape. Modifying the system to deploy automatically would increase an unconscious astronaut's chances if they survived a spacecraft's catastrophic descent.

Columbia broke apart during reentry while returning to Earth after a 16-day science mission. Investigators later found that a piece of shuttle fuel tank foam insulation punched a hole in the heat shielding that lined Columbia's left wing edge during its Jan. 16 launch. The damage allowed superheated atmospheric gases to penetrate the spacecraft's wing during re-entry, destroying the shuttle and killing the crew 16 minutes before their planned landing.

Returning to Earth aboard Columbia were commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Michael Anderson, David Brown and Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut.

The shuttle was flying about 200,000 feet (nearly 38 miles or 60 km) above Earth at a speed of about 12,500 mph (20,120 kph) when flight controllers received their last communications from the shuttle. That call came at about 8:59 a.m. EST (1359 GMT).

Once the spacecraft's cabin began breaking apart, Columbia's crew had no protection against the searing heat of re-entry outside, the report states, adding that the bright orange pressure suits could not withstand such conditions.

"The ascent and entry suit had no performance requirements for occupant protection from thermal events," the report states. "The only known complete protection from this event would be to prevent its occurrence."

I downloaded the 400 page report and took the time to skim through it, what I found was the while the left wing was disintegrating, the Shuttles computers did a pretty commendable job with all its thrusters to keep itself in a control flight.

Its amazing how far into the loss of control and eventual breakup that the crew was alive, even as the left wing totally came off and the shuttle begin to corkscrew, the co-pilot was attempting to regain hydraulic control, it was only as the super heated gases penetrated the crew module and pressure loss occurred. Experience in high altitude pressure loss has taught the Air Force and NASA that in general a healthy person has about 12 seconds of issuable consciousness, given the g-forces and general degradation of the human body from low gravity environments, they estimate that the shuttle crew should have had about 6 seconds of usable consciousness at loss of pressure. Enough time to close their visor on conscientious helmets.

Since not one of the recovered 7 helmets had their visors closed (they are lock in an up or open conscientious and require manual manipulation to close), its assumed that the pressure loss was quick enough and the g-forces sever enough to prevent any of the crew from being able to close their helmet visors. Not to even mention the crew that had not put on and locked their gloves, further compromising their suits pressurization abilities.

Its also interesting to note that one crew member apparently not fully buckled into their seat and was in trying to get fully locked down when the break up occurred.

Judging by the size of the report and all the findings and recommendations, its seems that an incredible amount of information was learned and will be put to good use in the future.

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"All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct." -- Carl Sagan

No disrespect to those who were lost, but I've always questioned the lack of use of suits during critical phases of space flight.

I'm sure they have their reasons, even being a simple as the logistics of simply operating the controls.

Clearly in a catastrophic loss such as this, no level of personal protection would have made much if any difference, but what about a vehicle that maintains structural integrity but experiences rapid decompression?

After this happened, I watched (with some level of amazement...) as reasons (and excuses frankly...) were given as to how "there are certain risks associated with space flight that we accept..." My paraphrasing of course, but this is weak...

<===There were certain risks with flying in a Marine Corps CH-53 and we accepted them, but we also went fantastically out of our way to minimize them, and not all of them made much sense either.

Take our helmets that we wore, which were equipped with two visors, one clear, and one heavily smoked. You would think that one was for day and one was for night. Actually, no, the procedure was to always use the dark visor. This made for reduced vision at night and less than optimal vision but the procedure was in place for protection of night vision against flash fires and various "explosions". I never put much heed into it until I experienced a flash fire in flight one night over Korea. I sure wished I had my dark visor instead of my clear down that night...

Going back to the statements made right after this accident, I recall a bit of arrogance regarding what they do and don't do and who's business it was or wasn't. Just like I didn't use to be my own person while serving in the Corps, neither are the people of NASA. They exist by our blessing and funding, they owe us a certain level of Due Diligence and do not entirely own themselves or their responsibilities.

I'm not suggesting that the American public write their EP's (emergency procedures), however they do owe us a certain level of accountability and self-audit which until now seemingly has gone unchecked.

I have a Uncle who was one of the original engineers on the shuttle and he used to state how they had a mentality that they knew they were going to lose a certain number of shuttles per number of flights (I forget the numbers he said at the moment...)

This is bullshit IMO, the mentality should be that we aren't going to lose ANY shuttles and design around that mentality. He said it would make the shuttle to expensive and to heavy... My response, that's why you're an engineer and not a fry cook, it's your job to design to all of your design constraints, weight being one of them, safety being another among many... If you don't adequately account for all of your constraints, then you have failed in your job...

(Yeah I know it's not all rosy like this in the real world, especially when politicians get involved...)

It just makes me angry to think that the shuttle was taken out by what amounted to a piece of foam...

_________________
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I can't agree with you more, Bull.

From the findings of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (2003), there seemed to be tension between engineers who thought the foam shedding problem has always been severe and management who took a "business as usual" view. It seemed that this was a lesson not learned from the Challenger accident, that safety should never be sacrificed just to give the illusion of the flight being "routine".

Perhaps, not having visors locked and their suits pressurized (as they do during the launch phase) was a saving grace for the Columbia crew. They blacked out quickly and did not face the terror of watching their cabin break up around them.