[dr_lew]

The reason the astronaut cannot tell thee difference is because he/she is stretched only from the perspective of an eexternal observer. From the astronaut’s point of view the space is almost normal, aside from the distortion of the field of view..

This is incorrect. The "stretching" etc. is due to tidal effects, which are no different than those responsible for the Roche limit for bodies in orbit. Inside this limit they will be disrupted by "tidal", or differential effects of gravity, even though they are in free fall.

The difference is that as one approaches a black hole, these effects become very large even over small distances. For example, if the earth were shrunk to 1/100 its radius, making it 1 million times as dense, then a pair of objects in the new LEO, would have a radial stretching tidal field of about 1 g/meter, so if they were tethered together by a 1 meter rope in the radial direction, the tension in the rope would be the same as if one of the objects were hanging by it in the real 1 g gravitational field of earth. Here's my calculation ... really!

[WhiskeyX]

You neglected the time dilation effects as the approach to the event horizon begins to freeze the external perception even as the internal perception seems to be normal. Don’t forget the broadeening of the physical space from the external view which will ultimately smear the dimension across the horizon even as the longitudinal axis is being stretched.