Mike Mullane - Riding Rockets

Bagian and Carter explained there was still the possibility of a nonexplosive but rapid enough depressurization to cause quick unconsciousness. Such air leakage could have occurred due to numerous penetrations at the rear cockpit bulkhead. These provided pathways for wire bundles and fluid lines to pass between the cockpit and the rest of the orbiter. At breakup those wires and tubes were violently ripped apart, and it was possible the pressurization sealing for those manufactured penetrations could have failed. There was also evidence of breakup debris striking the cockpit from the outside. A piece of steel had been found jammed into a window frame. While that particular piece of debris did not penetrate the cockpit, other debris might have, resulting in a depressurization rapid enough to cause unconsciousness.

But it was all conjecture. There was no way to know the pressure integrity of the cockpit and, therefore, the state of crew consciousness. Bagian and Carter did have some ancillary evidence suggesting crew inactivity, which some thought could be a signature of crew blackout. Every piece of paper recovered from the wreckage was examined to see if any crewmembers had written a note. Nothing had been discovered. Neither had the cockpit overhead emergency escape hatch been blown. Some astronauts had suggested they would have jettisoned it as they neared the water to facilitate escape if impact was survived. The status of Mike Smith’s PEAP also hinted at crew inactivity—the canister was only depleted by two and a half minutes, which meant his visor had remained closed during the fall. If it had been open, all five minutes of PEAP air would have leaked out. But, if the crew had been conscious, wouldn’t they have raised their visors to talk to one another in their fight for survival? That was Bagian’s and Carter’s hypothesis. After all, we were trained to react to emergencies as a team and that required communication. At breakup the intercom failed, leaving visors-open, direct speaking as the only means of communicating. (Crash damage had obliterated all the helmets and all but Mike’s PEAP, making it impossible to know if the visors of the others were up or down.)

After the presentation was concluded, someone put the escape question to Bagian and Carter. “If this had occurred during OFT [the first four shuttle flights in which the two-man crews had ejection seats], do you think the crew would have been able to bail out?” Their answer was a definite yes. The OFT crews had worn pressure suits. Even if cabin pressure had been lost, those suits would have kept the crew conscious and they would have been able to pull an ejection handle.

Carter next informed everybody that the flight surgeon’s office was going to archive a clip of our hair and a footprint to facilitate our identification in the event of a future shuttle loss. That comment suggested how difficult identification of the Challenger crew remains had been. Even dental records hadn’t been enough. John Young sagely observed, “When extraordinary methods are being taken to make sure you can be identified after you’re dead, everybody ought to think twice about the job they’re in.” He was right.

He was also right when he added, “We shouldn’t fly again until we have an escape system.” Already some NASA managers were suggesting we should return to flight as quickly as possible and the escape system modifications could catch up. As much as I disliked Young for his attempts to torpedo my astronaut career, the position he took on some issues were the right ones.

Carter reminded everybody, “Keep the information you just heard to yourselves.” At that Dick Richards (class of 1980) lashed out, “Who does NASA think it’s protecting? The families? They don’t care if the information is released.”

John Young answered him. “NASA is protecting NASA.” He had it right again.

After the meeting broke up, I went to the gym for a run. It quickly became a sprint. I wanted to punish myself. I wanted the agony of burning lungs and a pounding heart and aching legs to overwhelm me so I wouldn’t have to deal with the reality of what I had just heard. Sweat stung my eyes but I made no effort to wipe it away. I had become a self-flagellating penitent. Pain was good. I relaxed my jaw to its limits and tilted my head back, trying to form a straight pipe to my lungs. Strings of saliva grew from the corners of my mouth and were jerked away by the pounding of my legs. My respiration took on the sound of an emphysemic wheezing and gasping for breath. Several NASA employees passed opposite me and I caught the question in their eyes: “What’s he running from?”

I was running from my thoughts…and predictably losing. Judy or El had flipped Mike’s PEAP to on. There had been no cockpit floor buckling, therefore no explosive decompression. Those twin facts opened the door to the possibility that the cockpit had held its pressure as tightly as a bathysphere and the crew had been conscious throughout the fall. Try as I might I could not find shelter in the evidence of crew inactivity. Would I have written a note? I seriously doubted it. Would I have jettisoned the overhead hatch? No. Of that, I was certain. Had I been Scobee or Smith, I would have been fighting to regain vehicle control all the way to the water, knowing that if I didn’t, death was certain. The hatch on-off status was irrelevant to survivability. I also thought it was a big leap to assume the crew would have felt it necessary to raise their visors and communicate by direct speaking. I had been in the backseat of F-4 jets when the intercom had failed and hand signals had worked fine. And Scobee and Smith, sitting side by side, had the advantage of being able to see exactly what the other was doing. If I had been in their position and was conscious with the helmet visor down, would I have taken the chance of raising it to communicate? To do so would have meant overcoming years of jet crewmember training, which emphasized keeping your mask on during flight, particularly if there was any hint cockpit pressure integrity might be compromised. The mask in this case would have been the helmet visor. I would have kept it down.

Like everyone else I wanted to believe the crew had been unconscious but there was no hard proof. I kept seeing the horrific other possibility, that they had gone down in Challenger like galley slaves chained to the benches of their sinking ship and been aware of every torturous second. They had been trapped. They had no escape system. They were flying an operational space shuttle.

I couldn’t go on. I hit my wall. I slowed to a walk, steered off the track, found a tree, and collapsed against it. There would be no escaping the projector of my mind as it played what might have been the last moments of Challenger.

“ Challenger, you’re go at throttle up.”

Scobee answered, “Roger, Houston. Go at throttle up.”

Mike Smith watched the power tapes climb toward 104 percent. Even as he was doing so, the stack was disintegrating

The leaking fire had weakened the bottom SRB attachment strut. The right-side booster snapped free, rupturing the ET. Tons of propellant poured from the gas tank. The left-side booster ripped from its struts and joined the right-side SRB in chaotic, unguided flight. Challenger ’s fuselage and wings were broken into multiple parts. The cockpit was torn from its mounts.

At the instant of vehicle breakup the crew was whipsawed under their seat harnesses. Checklists were snatched from their Velcro tabs and jerked on their tethers. Pencils and drink containers separated from their tabs and were hurled through the volume. The noise of debris crashing into the outside of the cockpit added to the chaos. Exclamations of surprise came from some of the crew’s throats, but fell dead in their microphones. All electrical power had been lost at the separation of the cockpit from the rest of the fuselage.