The Columbia disaster might have been survivable if the crew elected to eject/had time to do so.
interesting hypothesis. Let's just presume they had and extra 30 seconds warning of impending doom. How would you theorize a survivable escape sequence?
I'm not trying to be sarcastic (really)
As for the 50,000 HALO jumping, I think the military's already equipped for that. They do 34,000 ft jumps for newbies now...