The cockpit passenger area is basicaly a CF vessel like a large oxygen tank made out of CF. I doubt it broke up witht he craft. It may have even maintained cabin pressure and dropped in a relatively stable manner. Lets not forget when the challenger broke up at 48K feet the crew compartment remained intact on a parabolic curve over 60k feet before plumeting down. We know the crew there were alive after breakup because the emergency oxygen systrems were activated which is a manual function and the oxygen consumed matches the time involved to impact witht he ocean and crew weights. there was a lawsuit by the crews families claiming they suffered huge trauma knowing their loved ones were alive in an inescapable creq compartment plumeting to death. Nasa's defense was while the crew may have been alive the crew compartment was aerodynamicaly so unstable that it would have spun and the crew would therefore have been unconcious not suffering.
Wow, thrown free in his seat. Amazing. I would have though no one could survive the gs, intense cold, boiling blood, and lack of O2. Well maybe the blood did not boil.
Juan- 50,000'+ for boiling blood. His ejection, fortunately, was not too dissimilar to an ejection from a fighter aircraft. At high velocity the pilot usually gets beaten up quite a bit during the ejection.
