(I'll spare you argument about your facile comparison between a strong aluminum tank covered with 5000 pounds of thermal-protective material and a thin silk balloon.)
The Challenger astronauts didn't have all the knowledge they needed to be aware of the certainty of their own deaths — I'd hold that there was no such certainty. The explosion was due to a confluence of events beyond their control, even beyond their knowledge. De Rozier had all the knowledge he needed to avoid dying, and no new information was gained by his death. There's not just a line between the two, there's a broad gulf, dividing reasonable reliance on systems that one knows could fail, and unreasonable trust in a device one knows to be misconceived from the start.
The Challenger astronauts didn't have all the knowledge they needed to be aware of the certainty of their own deaths — I'd hold that there was no such certainty. The explosion was due to a confluence of events beyond their control, even beyond their knowledge. De Rozier had all the knowledge he needed to avoid dying, and no new information was gained by his death. There's not just a line between the two, there's a broad gulf, dividing reasonable reliance on systems that one knows could fail, and unreasonable trust in a device one knows to be misconceived from the start.