Space Forum / Shuttle / January 2009

<dabolton@gmail.com> wrote in message The seatbelt issues raise another
issue which is that of Story Musgrave doing the standing reentry. He would
have became quite a pinball in the cockpit. Even until minor turbulence
situation could have been >catatrostrphic to the rest of the crew and
vehicle.

I heard he bounced around until his limbs flew off.  They have video, but
won't release it.

Still not done reading the report.

Ha there been any discussion on whether loss of power would have made
the crew "blind" and thus made it harder for them to react an close
helmet visors and don and lock gloves ? There is mention they had some
chemical light sticks, would those be sufficient for eyes to adapt to
new lower lighting level before acting to close visors ?

Do the crewmembers have training to close visors and turn on the
portable O2 supply even in the dark ?

Are they trained to detect pressure drops and react by closing
visors/turning on O2 supply ?

More importantly, it is mentioned that do not like to stay too long with
visors down and that this may result with a high concentration of O2 in
the cabin because the ACES suits are suppliued with O2 by the shuttle.

Wouldn't it be simpler to have the shuttle supply breathable  air to the
ACES suits under normal circumstances and have it swith to pure O2
during depress events (and then swith to portable supply) ? This way,
they could do the re-entry with normal air being supplied to them ad
only in accidents would it switch to O2.

I've now skimmed through all of it.

It is unfortunate that they redacted much of the autopsy side of the
investigation.

They've emphasised many many times that the crew lost consciousness very
early on. They mention that they did receive phyical trauma, partly due
to the restraint systems. They mention that very little of the ACES
fabric was recovered, and allude to cases of commercial airline crashes
where many victims were denuded while falling from the sky. (I guess we
have to assume this is what happened.

However, for the sake of investigating survivability of such incidents,
discussing the state of the bodies would be important. There are ways to
discuss this without revealing private information.

For instance, were the recovered body parts severely burned, or were
they more or less intact ? (aka: at what point did they lose their
clothing, and whether the clothing provided sufficient protection
against thermal events early on).

In other words, say the crewmembers in middeck had put on their visors
and had activated their portable O2, and had popped the hatch and
egressed prior to the shuttle starting to experience lethal movements/G
forces.  Would freefalling crewmember in aces suit and standard boots
have survived ? Or would they have burned up ?

Because in the end, this is what it is all about: is it possible to
egress during re-entry interface and survive, and with currently
technology, if not, is it close, or nowhere near survivable ?

Now for the next step:

Would it be possible for the shuttle to release an experiment after
having fired the de-orbit engine ? (ok, the "by the book guys will right
away say "NO", so I will rephrase the question:  HOW could the shuttle
arrange to have an experiment released after de-orbit burn).

AKA: take an instrumented dummy with a re-entry suit and parachute and
let it re-enter with some new material as a suit and see if it is
survivable.

One difference with a dummy however is that the human might have some
aerodynamic control with arms/feet (like skydivers).

Would it be correct to state that the goal of a re-entrring astronaut
would be to decelerate as fast as possible to reduce the thermal heating
phase ?

Consider the applications of a re-entry suit. For the ISS, they might
not need emergency capsules anymore, they could just step out of the
airlock, activate a de-orbit "safer" type engine and just fall down to
earth.