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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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This is nightmare fuel.
It shows that they did not get crushed when Columbia broke up. They likely were ejected from the charred crew cabin and tumbled as a fireball themselves until only metal pieces were left to float down.
In addition to recovering human remains, the search of East Texas also recovered several parts of flight deck panels.
Just as in the Challenger accident, several switches were determined to have been moved their nominal positions.
By correlating the recovered switches with the telemetry data that was transmitted after loss of voice signal, the investigators concluded that at least one person in that orbiter was alert and working the problem within <1 minute of when molten metal started to penetrate the crew cabin and the seat belts started to fail.
Never Give Up
Never surrender.
Just like the Apollo 1 fire and various Soyuz incidents, this is exactly who you pick for spaceflight. You want a person who, when bad shit happens, doesn't panic, and then you train the absolute shit outta them until performing your tasks while there's a literal fire or your air is running out (remember, 10 seconds of useful consciousness) or you're drowning or whatever is just muscle memory.
No, they recovered the bodies. IIRC the postmortems showed they were all dead before the ship broke up. It seemed it happened so fast they weren’t all fully in their suits; one person didn’t even have his helmet on. I’ve never been able to find if this was that unworn helmet or it was ripped off somebody, but I also haven’t looked that hard.
Wow I can't imagine bodies lasting through entry. Crazy.
Shoots the shit out of the "it all just burns right up" theory of space clean up.
Possibly though by the time catastrophe struck Columbia it had already bled off 5,000 mph from its entry speed (17,500 down to 12,500 before breakup)
I think the truth lies somewhere in between "it burns right up" and "2/3rds of the planet is water"
After further reading( including from an old quora entry where a person who searched and found debris commented) they did find some larger remains. Apparently the crew cabin imploded and retained some remains as it spun and fell, ejecting more debris and remains as it plummeted.
Also, human remains are 2/3 water, so they'd be less likely to burn completely
Stuff survives reentry all the time. A lot of times things will be targeted to an area of the South Pacific known as the “spacecraft cemetery” because it’s the most distant point in any ocean from any land. Of course, a lot more stuff has an uncontrolled reentry and just lands wherever. As we launch more spacecraft and more people have smartphones and social media we’ll probably see more examples of space debris landing around the world.