It's the most dangerous manned spacecraft ever flown. It has no powered-flight escape system... Basically the bail-out system we have on the shuttle is the same bail-out system a B-17 bomber pilot had in World War II. |
Since the autopilot was holding the shuttle with its top to the Earth, I now had the planet in my face. In all my other life experiences speed meant noise. Now I was traveling at nearly 5 miles per second and there was only silence. It was as if I were hovering in a balloon. |
That was the true tragedy of Challenger. Nothing was learnt. Only janitors and cafeteria workers at NASA were blameless in the deaths of the Challenger seven. Columbia was a repeat of Challenger, where people had a known design problem and launched anyway. |