[wimpycat]

That Democrat Senator (former astronaut) from Florida said this morning on one of the talk shows that if the crew cabin had been "breached", there would have been instant decompression and they would have quickly lost consciousness. That would be a huge comfort to me if one of my friends or relatives were on board.

We don't know how long the crew members knew that there was a problem, since they probably haven't synched up the time of the last radio transmission to the video of the shuttle starting to break apart (as far as I know), but hopefully they didn't know exactly how big the problem was until it was too late. I sincerely believe they didn't even have time to know that the end had come, even if they realized there was a problem.

[weikel]

Damn right they'd lose consciousness they'd be instantly incinerated if the hab pod was breached.

[Pyro7480]

Well, if it was "breached" in the sense that the break-up caused the cabin to be disconnected from the oxygen and nitrogen tanks, then yes, they would have lost consciousness. However, they wear pressure suits during lift-off and reentry, so even if they lost cabin pressure, they could still breathe. But if the cabin was torn apart by the atmospheric and thermal forces, then.... you get the picture.

[Exit148]

To your #8:

The thing that bothers me the most is the possible anguish they must have suffered from the point in time when they first realized that they were in a death situation, until it occurred. If they were simply concerned, that would be one thing, but to know that the point of no return was at hand -----well, I can't even think how they must have felt. I hope they didn't have time to think before they were with God.

[Afroggy]

Yeah, at that altitude they would have had maybe a second of useful consciousness, if that. Even at about 50,000 ft you're only conscious for less than five seconds. 02 tends to disassociate itself from the hemoglobin molecule very quickly at high altitudes. Without a functional pressure suit, I'm sure gases dissolved in the blood (including 02) would become gaseous instantaneously at over 200,000 ft.

That's assuming there was an immediate decompression and the suits lost integrity at the same time, which is quite possible. The crew module (or whatever you want to call it), was breached as one of the first bodies found showed signs of burns and trauma, as did that helmet. The body or the helmet wouldn't have been by itself if the module hadn't been breached so I'm sure the breach happened quite rapidly.

Regarding how they know they have all the crewmembers? Without knowing the specifics, I can tell you that in aircraft accidents a count of trunks or skulls is a fairly common method of enumerating the victims involved. Given that the human body is 90%+ water, it takes a lot of heat over a long period of time to accomplish a complete incineration. Though the heat of re-entry (3000+ degrees) is enough, it wouldn't have persisted long enough.

Oddly, in the case of the pilots, there is a common belief you're going to survive the emergency as that is the way you're always trained. Your training experiences leave you with the expectation that you'll survive the incident, even if it seems objectively unlikely. After a few decades of simulator training, I found that the my real emergencies felt no different than the real training events. You fly the way you're trained and the lower section of my brain always expected similar outcomes, whether it was reasonable or not.

No, I can't imagine there would have been much time for contemplations of mortality on the part of the crew.

[Rebelbase]

I was under the impression that since Challenger, all shuttle crews wear their pressure suits during ascent and decent phases of a mission.