And they provided the rest of the account based on what they've discussed within NASA in the last five years. The official account released by NASA ends with shuttle pilot Michael Smith saying, "Uh-oh!" Some NASA employees have evidently heard more - much more. NASA doesn't give a damn about anything but covering it's ass," he said. "NASA can't face the fact that they put these astronauts in a situation where they didn't have adequate equipment to survive. "Cover up? Of course there was a coverup," declared Robert Hotz, a member of the Presidential commission that investigated the disaster. That's when the shuttles crew compartment, which remained intact after the vessel exploded over the Atlantic, hit the ocean at over 2,000 miles per hour, instantly killing the crew. Two minutes forty-five seconds later the tape ends. The tape is said to begin with a startled crewman screaming,"What happened? What happened? Oh God - No!" Screams and curses are heard - several crewmen begin to weep - and then others bid their families farewell. Such an event would have caused the mid-deck floor to buckle upward that simply didn't happen.Ī purported transcript of the Challenger crew's final horrifying moments has circulated online for many years, supposedly taken from a "secret tape" leaked from NASA:Ī secret NASA tape reveals that the crew of the shuttle Challenger not only survived the explosion that ripped the vessel apart they screamed, cried, cursed and prayed for three hellish minutes before they slammed into the Atlantic and perished on January 28, 1986. There was certainly no sudden, catastrophic loss of air of the type that would have knocked the astronauts out within seconds. In fact, no clear evidence was ever found that the crew cabin depressurized at all. If it lost its pressurization very slowly or remained intact until it hit the water, they were conscious and cognizant all the way down. Even if the compartment was gradually losing pressure, those on the flight deck would certainly have remained conscious long enough to catch a glimpse of the green-brown Atlantic rushing toward them. It stabilized in a nose-down attitude within 10 to 20 seconds, say the investigators. Though the shuttle had broken to pieces, the crew compartment was intact. Even so, if the crew compartment did not rapidly lose air pressure, Scobee would only have had to lift his mask to be able to breathe. The PEAP of Commander Francis Scobee was in a place where it was difficult to reach. Someone, apparently astronaut Ronald McNair, leaned forward and turned on the personal emergency air pack of shuttle pilot Michael Smith. After a few breaths, the seven astronauts stopped getting oxygen into their helmets. As they were feeling the jolt, the four astronauts on the flight deck saw a bright flash and a cloud of steam. This probably accounted for the "uh oh" that was the last word heard on the flight deck tape recorder that would be recovered from the ocean floor two months later. There was an uncomfortable jolt - "A pretty good kick in the pants" is the way one investigator describes it - but it was not so severe as to cause injury. When the shuttle broke apart, the crew compartment did not lose pressure, at least not at once. Powell wrote that the crew were likely all alive and conscious until the shuttle's crew compartment plunged into the Atlantic Ocean: Such an environment breeds its own rumors, and Miami Herald reporter Dennis E. The agency was highly secretive about matters relating to the Challenger tragedy, actively fighting in the courts media requests to be allowed access to photographs of the wreckage, the details of the settlements made with the crews' families, or the autopsy reports, and this reticence to share information likely convinced some that there was more to the story than was being told. NASA later conceded it was likely that at least three of the crew members aboard remained conscious after the explosion, and perhaps even throughout the few minutes it took forthe crew compartment of the shuttle to fall back to Earth and slam into the Atlantic Ocean. It was generally assumed (and NASA did little to disturb this opinion) that all aboard died the moment the external tank blew up. Videotapes released by NASA afterwards showed that a few seconds before the disaster, an unusual plume of fire and smoke could be seen spewing from the lower section of the shuttle's right solid-fuel rocket. Seventy-three seconds into the 28 January 1986 flight of the space shuttle Challenger the craft broke apart, killing the seven astronauts aboard.
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