the final moments
next tuesday, free press, a division of simon & schuster will publish "Comm Check ... The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia," by michael cabbage and william harwood. newsday and the book authors offer a chilling sneak preview: columbia's final minutes: the second-by-second account of the shuttle's last minutes.«the crew module fell intact for 38 seconds after main vehicle breakup, plunging 60,000 feet to an altitude of 26 miles before it began to disintegrate from the combined effects of aerodynamic stress and extreme temperatures... if any of the astronauts were still alive at that point, death would have been instantaneous, the result of blunt force trauma, including hypersonic wind blast, and lack of oxygen... the survivability study concluded relatively modest design changes might enable future crews to survive long enough to bail out. but Columbia's crew had no chance. the astronauts fell to earth amid a cloud of wreckage and debris.»
