On April 13, 1970 halfway to the moon, an explosion rocked the command module of Apollo 13. Jim Lovell then relayed the news to Earth with his now famous, calm and collected words "Houston, we've had a problem". Had this/his explosion's origin been in a somewhat different location, those may have been the last words we ever heard from Lovell and the crew of Apollo 13. Had that been the ill-fate of 13 and somehow Lovell's words been sadly, inexplicably (without some basic examination) misunderstood or mistranslated, perhaps forever noted as "unintelligible", lost might have been a revealed quality of composure. A grace under pressure from an Astronaut, an explorer staring point blank at possible or even likely death.
Let us move forward to 2003 and the reentry of STS-107. I think the general perception is that the crew was unaware that anything was amiss until Columbia was moments short of breaking up. I don't believe that was the case and a clue to this fact may reside in the audio recordings.
Already riding the unnerving razor's edge of the reentry process, the crew and more importantly, Commander Husband had the foreshadowed knowledge of the foam strike. He and the other crew members had in fact been alerted to and viewed the foam strike via uploaded video days before. What exactly caused the bright flash over Nevada we'll never know, but based on its luminosity, it could have easily marked a moment for the crew. A moment in which the knowledge of this foam strike suddenly had new and ominous meaning towards their survival. A sharpening of the razor's edge of that already edgy reentry process could have felt just that much less forgiving to fault...and that much more life threatening.
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