Re: Challenger Crew Remains

I'm not going to post the full text, but the report made by Joe Kerwin (physician as well as astronaut who flew on the first mission to Skylab in 1973) regarding the condition of the crew of Challenger can be found at http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/kerwin.html

In regards to the Columbia crew being aware of any problem: During this phase of flight, the crew are monitoring enough systems that they could have been aware that there something amiss, but almost certainly not to the extent that it would have appeared to be a potentially catastrophic anomaly. As evidenced by the air to ground, the crew did receive some indication that there were Caution and Warning system events associated with the loss of data from the sensors we are hearing about.

However, you have to realize that the C&W messages the crew was receiving were not of a nature to suggest that the vehicle was in any immediate danger. Speculating, I believe that CDR Husband was begining to describe the sequence of C&W messages the crew was observing when signal was lost. That is how the crew are trained to perform - for another example, listen to the air to ground from CDR Eileen Collins during the early stages of ascent on STS-93 at

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov./gallery/video/shuttle/sts-93/html/fd1.html

RE: Recovery Turns Grim as Remains of Some Victims Are Found