Space Shuttle thermal protection system
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle "Columbia" was destroyed on reentry due to a failure of the TPS. The investigation team found and reported that the probable cause of the accident was that during launch, a piece of foam debris punctured an RCC panel on the left wing's leading edge and allowed hot gases from the reentry to enter the wing and disintegrate the wing from within, leading to eventual loss of control and breakup of the shuttle.
Space Shuttle Columbia disaster
"Columbia" was scheduled to land at 9:16 a.m. EST.
In 2008, NASA released a detailed report on survivability aspects of the "Columbia" reentry. The crew would have had less than a minute between the beginning of orbiter disintegration and depressurization. The structural failure of the left wing set off alarms in the cabin, although they had no way of knowing that the wing had broken apart as the rear of the orbiter could not be seen from the cabin. All evidence indicated that the crew frantically tried to regain control of "Columbia" as it began to spin out of control, but the loss of the left wing caused the orbiter to yaw to the right, exposing its underside to extreme aerodynamic forces and causing total structural disintegration. The crew cabin separated from the rest of the orbiter and rapidly depressurized, which would have killed or incapacitated the astronauts within seconds. Afterwards, the cabin spun around at high RPM, which caused the seat restraints on their upper bodies to fail. They were thus whipped around violently and pummeled by flying and falling objects from the disintegrating cabin, along with their heads and necks being slammed against the helmets, which were not designed to provide any head protection. Even if the cabin had remained structurally intact and reached a lower altitude where air could refill it, the high altitude depressurization would have been fatal to the astronauts unless they received medical attention within five minutes, approximately the amount of time it would take between cerebral hypoxia and brain death.