NASA marks 40 years since Apollo deaths (1 Viewer)

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syscom3

Pacific Historian
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Jun 4, 2005
Orange County, CA
It's hard to believe this was 40 years ago. I still remember seeing this accident being reported in the news back then.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - It was supposed to be a routine launch pad test.

But from the Apollo 1 command module at Pad 34 came a panicked voice saying, "Fire in the cockpit."

Exactly 40 years later, the three Apollo astronauts who were killed in that flash fire were remembered Saturday for paving the way for later astronauts to be able to travel to the moon. The deaths of Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee forced
NASA to take pause in its space race with the Soviet Union and make design and safety changes that were critical to the agency's later successes.

"I can assure you if we had not had that fire and rebuilt the command module ... we could not have done the Apollo program successfully," said retired astronaut John Young, who flew in Gemini 3 with Grissom in 1965. "So we owe a lot to Gus, and Rog and Ed. They made it possible for the rest of us to do the almost impossible."

The memorial service at the
Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex marked the start of a solemn week for NASA — Sunday is the 21st anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger accident, and Thursday makes four years since the space shuttle Columbia disaster.

Chaffee's widow, Martha, and White's son, Edward III, along with NASA associate administrator Bill Gerstenmaier, laid a wreath at the base of the Space Mirror Memorial, a tall granite-finished wall engraved with the names of the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia astronauts and seven other astronauts killed in accidents.

Chaffee, 69, remembered feeding her two children hot dogs for dinner that night in 1967 and knowing something was wrong when astronaut Michael Collins showed up at her home to tell her about the accident.

"My first reaction was, 'What could have happened? He's not flying,'" Martha Chaffee recalled before the ceremony.

NASA also hadn't considered the countdown drill hazardous, anticipating accidents only in space. Fire rescue and medical teams were not at the launch pad. No procedures had been developed for the type of emergency the Apollo 1 crew faced. The work levels around the spacecraft contained steps, sliding doors and sharp turns that hindered emergency responses.

An investigation said the fire most likely started in an area near the floor around some wires between the oxygen panel and the environmental control system. The 100 percent oxygen environment made it highly combustible and internal pressure made it impossible for the astronauts to open the command module's inner hatch.

The astronauts died from inhaling toxic gases.

Before his death, Grissom, the second astronaut in space, had been so disappointed with problems in the new spacecraft that at one point he hung a lemon over it, said Lowell Grissom, the astronaut's younger brother.

After the tragedy, the command module's hatch was changed so it opened outward, flammable materials in the cabin were replaced, wiring problems were fixed and a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen replaced the all oxygen atmosphere.

Apollo 1's legacy contributed to the safety culture at NASA and the successful lunar landings, said Edward White III, whose father conducted the first U.S. spacewalk in 1965.

"The safety that came out of Apollo 1 is still here today," he said.

Describing it as "one of the most significant relics in the history of the space program," Lowell Grissom urged that the Apollo 1 spacecraft be moved from a warehouse in Virginia to the launch pad where the astronauts perished.

"As we remember their deaths ... let us renew our dedication to the quest for which they died, reaching for the stars for all mankind," Grissom said.
 
I think NASA got sloppy when that happend and even when Challenger exploded and then it just showed me again with the Discovery incedent, it is just terrable that these men and woman died during these incodents, but they died enjoying what they do and it is a risky job, but still NASA were sloppy.

R.I.P.
 
I remembered when it happened it really shook everyone. Gus was the guy they were a little upset with over the loss of his capsule during the Gemini missions.
The voice tapes of the accident have not been released but are meant to be very harrowing.:salute:
 
Syscom...good to see that you finally got this thread going after you were so 'rudely' interrupted last time! What a 'busy' girl she was.

Anyway at the time I was going to ask whether you thought the tragedy was a result of excessive government pressure from the space race.

This is from Deborah Cadbury's book 'Space Race', page 308;

'The press had caught a whiff of trouble. What was wrong, they wanted to know. Grissom explained, 'I've got misgivings. We've had problems before, but these have been coming in bushelfuls. Frankly, I think this mission has a pretty damn slim chance of flying its full fourteen days.' Did this present a danger, the press wondered. Grissom replied: 'If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the programme. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.' He omitted to mention the pressure from the top for the team to 'get off their asses'. In an election year, President Johnson needed a significant step forward to impress the voters'.
 

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