Message posted by Andre' M. Dall'au on January 28, 2012 at 17:41:56 PST:

The SRB's went a long distance from the initial explosion, unfortunately there were no cell phone cameras at the time but they flew for quite a distance. It just looked short from the cameras at the cape that recorded the famous images looking up at the launch not from the side as I did.
Yes I know about the crew compartment and that there was some evidence that post-explosion emergency actions were taken by some of the crew members indicating that they were alive and thinking for at least some of the descent (some switches were re-positioned on the back of some of the seats that were required to be thrown in the event of an accident such as this). The fact that they had water in their lungs indicated that drowning not the explosion or impact was the cause of death. I wonder if an earlier design consideration of a fully encapsulated crew compartment with its own parachutes and life support systems would have helped.

BTW the last launch I watched prior to Challenger was Apollo 13, maybe I should go to China and watch some of their rockets.

In Reply to: Re: Challenger posted by Peter Merlin on January 28, 2012 at 17:03:38 PST:

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