Perhaps you don't remember what happened to Apollo 1.

According to TFA, what happens when you close the visor is that the oxygen starts flowing into your suit. The suit is open-loop, not closed-loop, so the oxygen goes straight into the atmosphere of the shuttle cabin. Quite a lot of oxygen, actually. So much so that it becomes a fire hazard, like what happened to Apollo 1, where you risk a single slightly marginal connection sparking and creating a firestorm in a shuttle that would have otherwise landed.

The problem is that the shuttle was designed so that nobody would need to wear a spacesuit except to do a spacewalk and then mildly corrected so that you have a slightly reduced chance of death in an accident.

Spaceplanes don't have to use a ceramic tile, just the space shuttle, the way they designed it required either ceramic tiles or reusable ablative coverings (which was optional in the design for a while in case the ceramic tiles turned out to be impossible, but hasn't been mentioned since)

One aspect of the X-33 that never got tested (which bugs me) is the reusable refractory metallic heat shield. See, the denser the craft, the gentler the reentry. If the shuttle was less dense, perhaps by having the orbiter integrate at least some of the external tank's capacity, it might have been possible to make one with a less delicate shield.

The main reason why the ablative non-metallic heat shields on capsules are essentially foolproof is that you re-enter on a piece of shielding that's been kept covered the whole flight. You could likely make a capsule with a reinforced-carbon-carbon reusable shield if it weren't likely to shatter when it hits the ground.

Not even that.

Consider the A-10, with the titanium bathtub around the pilot so you can shoot all you want, but he's still sound.

Now, consider strengthening the crew cabin so that in the event of a structural breakup, they have a fighting chance of bailing out. No capsule. No separation. Just a little more plating or Titanium instead of Aluminum in the right spots. Remember, both the Columbia's and the Challenger's crew cabin held together for quite a long time.

The real flaw, but only painfully evident in retrospect, was not making something like the Saturn-Shuttle, like the X-20 atop a Saturn II, or even a reusable first stage for the existing stack. Likely taking a Saturn IB, II, or V stack and making it reusable bottom-to-top would have worked out far better.

The problem was barreling forwards with blinders on, not going back and checking assumptions. It wouldn't have been such an edgy design had it been more like the initial DC-3 concept or had they re-evaluated some of the early designs that were rejected for not being fully reusable or making sure that abnormal things like O-ring wear and tank debris weren't more carefully controlled.

By "Configure the suit for full protection" that means put on the gloves and push down the visor. All of the controls are designed for a unsuited crewmember, the visor gets in the way and requires you to be on your oxygen system. And the oxygen system is pure O2 so you can't keep it running because there will be too much O2 and not enough N2 in the atmosphere of the shuttle.

So, no, there's no possibility for a dead-man's switch in the current design. But it's clearly something necessary in a future design. Even airline passengers are protected against depressurization and airliners are fairly safe.

Consider the SR-71 pilot referenced in the report. He didn't eject, his plane broke up mid-flight, yet he survived. Granted, different thermal environment, but same degree of overpressure.

So, to me, there were things that could have been different that might have resulted in a chance for at least some of the crew to have landed alive.

That really doesn't do the report justice. You couldn't add magic restraints, better spacesuits, self-activating parachutes, etc. to the shuttle and expect for crewmembers to survive the accident, but there are a lot of more subtle design points to be made.

e.g. the example of the person who survived a SR-71 structural breakup, at even greater overpressure on the suit but with a more favorable thermal environment and while properly suited up.

The big and fairly underappreciated lesson of both shuttle accidents is that the crew cabin survived for quite a while longer then the vehicle at large. To me, thus suggests there are benefits to be had in figuring out which large structural segments of a crewed spacecraft... even a capsule that can survive uncontrolled re-entry... are going to survive the longest in a catastrophic failure and see if they can last long enough for the crew to bail out. Sure you've just lost the vehicle, but at least you might recover some of the crew.

Insisting that the only way up and down is in a ballistic capsule is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Something like the Soyuz is fine for now, but there are plenty of ways to make a spaceplane that are not quite as flawed as the shuttle.

See, I was worried that, given that even in Cincinnati suburbia, which has incredibly poor mass-transit and no rail lines at all, you can find a useful transportation point within five miles to get to work, that there was some logical reason why people insisted upon driving to work that I, living in California with ready access to rail lines and better weather, must have missed. But given that you keep returning to things like frostbite from cycling in cold temperatures as if they make cycling impossible for people who are not crazy and have a pretty poor understanding of the engineering and physics of the real world, it's quite clear that I'm wasting my time trying to express logical arguments. What's going on is that ditching a car threatens your pseudo-religious belief in the car.

For example, how do you respond to my point that people in Europe have no problems transporting kids in shitty weather without driving? By pointing out that some European countries permit suicide. I'm guessing this means that, to you, not driving is a moral sin? See, my argument was that they are quite successfully cycling through all sorts of nasty weather, without helmets, with kids, without without having a negative effect on their lifespan. However, by comparing the European cycling experience to doctor-assisted suicide, it's clear that this is not about facts, but that it's not just crazy pastors in Detroit who are worshiping cars.

Really, if you want the best for your infants, you'd find ways so they don't have to be on icy streets at all. Especially in a motor vehicle on the ice when the risk of your car or another car spinning out and causing a side-impact is elevated. Otherwise, I think you'll find the Europeans can transport three infants in the cold just fine with no appreciable infant mortality downside.

Global warming is not the only negative side effect of too much CO2 in the atmosphere, which you'd know if you were doing anything other than parroting soundbites. Likewise, if you had actually done any research, you'd realize that only a little over half of the cost of interstates are funded by gasoline taxes.

And, furthermore, on the average, a car emits around 5 tons of CO2 in a year. There's no way I can belch that much, so while insisting that your truck isn't part of the problem may help you sleep better at night, it doesn't change the fact that 20-25% of CO2 emissions are from cars.

As far as the pileups on bike races, have you seen an automobile race? Neither have anything to do with getting from place A to B. I don't think you actually understand basic physics, so that's probably why you think that two cyclists mixing it up on a fully-loaded bike route is both unlikely and fairly benign.

So, pretty much, the end point of your argument has little to do with facts and mostly to do with little sound bites that you've cherry-picked to sound like you have a rational argument. So I guess I should form my arguments in terms of Jesus and Sarah Palin and Scary Islamic Terrorists next time.

Clearly, you've been reading too many libertarian propaganda pieces and not nearly enough real books on traffic engineering. If you make a 20 lane highway, it's going to only have marginally more capacity than a 4 lane highway. This has been carefully measured.

Likewise, you clearly haven't seen an example of how much space the same number of people in cars, bikes, and buses take up.

The real problem is that I might send my notational kids above the age of ten off to school on their bikes and know that my notational kids would be able to live healthier and longer lives than the other kids, even after I account the risk of moronic drivers. Except that I have to worry about people like yourself not paying attention while you drive a truck and calling CPS on me because you insist that the only proper form of transportation is a truck.

And in parts of Europe they do pack 3 kids on a bike and grab groceries on the way back. Sure the bike doesn't look like the road bikes they sell in America, but it gets the job done just fine.

I think you may be laboring under the assumption that I actually planned on living five miles from a transportation nexus. Well, I did the most recent move, doing a test commute first. But this also includes times when I lived in deep suburbia in the midwest.

If you are so confident about your truck's emissions, I've got a challenge for you. How about I seal myself in a room of equivalent space to your truck and drink some soda and belch incessantly. Actually, no, I'll drink cheap California sparkling wine, so that I've got both the risks of alcohol poisoning and the world's worst hangover on top of your imaginary CO2 emissions. You seal yourself into your truck with a pipe running the exhaust into your cabin and drive. Last man alive wins.

The simple and plain truth is that it is a matter of when, not if, we will run out of oil. Even if you believe the crazy Russians in their alternative oil generation theory, we still would need to treat the oil in the ground the way we should be treating our aquifers. It is also a matter of when, not if, enough CO2 that was previously in carbon compounds buried underground but is now in the atmosphere will cause problems.

The rate at which you squander gasoline in your truck means that you are bringing me closer to collective disaster. So, yes, this does give me the right to suggest that you quit squandering gasoline and fouling the air I breathe. And it also gives me the right to suggest that it's a better investment of my tax dollars (given that the highway and road system is funded mostly by my tax dollars and only partially through gas taxes) to build better bike facilities so that I don't have to intermix with traffic while riding and better rail lines so that I don't have to bike as far than trying to throw good money after bad by building more roads.

Personally, I'd much rather keep my uncomprimised car for when I really do need to drive 600 miles in a single day instead of waiting for somebody to figure out how to make a battery powered car and electric vehicle infrastructure that can do that... and ride my bike the rest of the time.

You have an interesting definition of kludge.

So you would prefer that we spend billions of dollars trying to sell people on the idea of buying a battery powered car, PLUS billions more trying to maintain and improve an automobile infrastructure? I don't know where you live, but in the big cities of California, we've pretty much reached the point where it's just not practical to build any more highways. I wouldn't regard the current car transportation infrastructure as being particularly well functioning.

Especially given that during rush hour in most cities, the bike will get you home faster than the car. Some of LA's finest crazies did a nice demonstration.

100 commuters on bikes take up much less room than 100 commuters in cars, even if they traded in their SUVs for Smart cars. And I have lived both in the midwest and in California and I have never lived more than five miles from a transportation hub that had a quick commute to work, I just didn't realize it all the time.

There are plenty of people who have gone carless, even in crappy weather. I just bike through it, given that all I have to deal with is 40 degree weather and rain. There are studded snow tires for bikes that can deal with snow and ice just fine. Or you just work from home or catch a bus.

Just because you have excuses for why you still drive doesn't mean that any of them actually make sense.

In 2004, my thinking was that if we could sell your standard two-adult household on the idea of replacing ONE car with an electric, we'd make progress.

In 2008, after spending the past two years biking to work and seeing all of the things it's done to me, I question why we bother with cars in the first place. We are not meant to be lard-asses. Any overweight non-athletic nerd can bike 5 miles to a large scale transportation nexus and enough of a rail system that everybody's at most 5 miles from a transportation nexus is not that expensive.

And then there's no stupid screwing around with batteries and hybrids and stuff.

Also, he assumes that we MUST continue to use cars EXACTLY like we use them today.

Given the choice between a battery powered semi truck and starting to add overhead wires and extra track to our rail network, I suspect that if we move away from gas, we won't see much in terms of long-haul trucking.

I made the deliberate choice that I would save the planet while becoming a buff ass-kicker two years ago and bike whenever I can instead of drive.

The problem is that we don't actually know. There are some theories that there's a point at which radiation is no longer harmful, but we don't know where it is.

Also, people conveniently forget how much radioactives, heavy metals, and other nasty stuff is allowed to enter the atmosphere from conventional power plants.

There are some reactor designs that are amenable for making weapons-grade materials and there are some that are not.

The best weapons grade material comes from frequent replacement of fuel rods so you can maximize the amount of Pu-240 generated from U-238 and minimize the amount of Pu-241 generated from Pu-240.

The intermingling of Pu-240 and Pu-241 is one of the best ways to prevent proliferation.

Greater Tokyo has been leveled much more recently than the San Francisco Bay Area.