As someone else has said making an ejection system that could resuce the crew at each stage of the flight is very difficult. What's more troubling (although no

As someone else has said making an ejection system that could resuce the crew at each stage of the flight is very difficult. What's more troubling (although not surprising) is Nasa's 'news management' in keeping this a secret because of fear of bad publicity. 20 years later this attitude hadn't changed with the Columbia - when Nasa prevented any in-orbit inspection of the damaged tiles. Just in case they then had the PR nightmare of a crew that were likely to die on re-entry and no way of rescuing them.