Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Fire & Ice by Surge Photos of the Fire: NASA's First Disaster. On Jan. 27, 1967, NASA experienced its first space disaster - the deaths of three during a training excercise for the Apollo 1 mission. Pictured are the three Apollo 1 prime crewmembers intended for the first manned Apollo space flight: (L to R) Edward H. White II, Virgil I. "Gus" , and Roger B. . A fire inside the Apollo Command Module during a test took the lives of all three astronauts. NASA had not experienced a disaster of this magnitude previously. AS-204 Patch. This design was intended for the ill-fated mission. Apollo 1 was originally designated AS-204 but following the fire, the astronauts' widows requested that the mission be remembered as Apollo 1 and following missions would be numbered subsequent to the flight that never made it into space. Angle on Apollo. This high angle view shows the Apollo spacecraft Command Module for the AS-204 mission (later renamed Apollo 1), looking toward -Z axis, during preparation for installation of the crew compartment heat shield, showing mechanics working on aft bay. After the Fire. This photograph shows Apollo 1's Command Module a day after the fire that took the lives of astronauts Lt. Col. Virgil "Gus" Ivan Grissom, Lt. Col. Edward Higgins White II, and Lt. Cdr. Roger Bruce Chaffee. The Command Module was taken to the White Room at Launch Complex 34. The intense heat of the flash fire has clearly affected the exterior. Apollo Spacecraft Diagram. This NASA schematic details the size of the Apollo space capsules, service modules and lunar landers that would ultimately take astronauts to the in the late and early 1970s. Apollo 1 Crew Outdoors. On Jan. 27, 1967, Apollo 1's crew—Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee—was killed when a fire erupted in their capsule during testing. Here, the trio post at their launch pad during training. Building the Apollo 1 Craft. Spacecraft 12 (for AS-204 mission, later renamed Apollo 1) looking toward Y-axis during installation of heat shield. Note uprighting system compressor in aft bay, at right, and Reaction Control System (RCS) valve module panel, center of photo. Three Crew Members Check Couch Installation. The three crew members for the Apollo-Saturn 204 (AS-204, later renamed Apollo 1) mission check out the couch installation on the Apollo Command Module (CM) at North American's Downey facility. Left to right in their pressurized space suits are astronauts Virgil I. Grissom, Roger B. Chaffee and Edward H. White II. Saturn 1 Launch Vehicle. A stage of the uprated Saturn 1 launch vehicle mission unloaded from NASA barge Promise after arrival at Cape Kennedy. This launch vehicle was intended for Apollo/Saturn 204 mission (later renamed Apollo 1). Water Egress Training. Prime crew members for the first manned Apollo 1 space flight practice water egress procedures in a swimming pool at Ellington Air Force Base (EAFB), Houston, . Edward H. White II rides life raft in the foreground. Astronaut Roger B. Chaffee sits in hatch of the boilerplate model of the spacecraft. Astronaut Virgil I. Grissom, third member of the crew, waits inside the spacecraft. Apollo 1: A fatal fire. The changed forever on Jan. 27, 1967, when a flash fire swept through the Apollo 1 command module during a launch rehearsal test. Despite the best efforts of the ground crew, the three men inside perished. It would take more than 18 months of delays and extensive redesigns before NASA sent any men into space. NASA had a lofty goal, set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade. Earlier Mercury and Gemini flights had been the first steps toward that goal, testing how humans behaved in space and how to do technical spacecraft procedures such as rendezvous. Now the Apollo missions would take astronauts all the way to the moon for orbital missions and landing missions. The first manned mission — an Earth-orbiting mission — was originally designated Apollo Saturn-204, or AS-204, but was later renamed Apollo 1. The Apollo 1 fire was a difficult time for NASA and its astronauts, but the improvements in astronaut safety allowed the agency to complete the rest of the program with no further fatalities. The agency also met Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the moon in 1969, during . NASA had a special ceremony honoring the Apollo 1 astronauts on the 50th anniversary of their deaths in 2017, which included unveiling a new exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center showing the hatches of the damaged command module. The astronauts. The Apollo 1 crew commander, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, was an Air Force veteran of the Korean War. He was chosen was among NASA's first group of seven astronauts, the . Grissom was America's second person in space in 1961. On that mission, Mercury's Liberty Bell 7, the hatch door blew for unknown reasons upon splashdown. Grissom ended up in the water and was rescued by a helicopter (which at first tried, in vain, to pick up the spacecraft; the spacecraft was later pulled from the ocean floor in 1999). Some in the Astronaut Office were skeptical that Grissom's reputation would recover (many believed Grissom blew the hatch; he swore he didn't). However, Grissom successfully commanded the first Gemini flight, , and was selected to do the same for Apollo. Fellow spaceflight veteran Ed White, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, was the first American to make a spacewalk, on in 1965. The images of him soaring in space for 23 minutes are still frequently seen today; it is considered one of history's most memorable spacewalks. Roger Chaffee was a seasoned Navy lieutenant commander who joined the program in 1963. Although a rookie in space, he had spent years supporting the Gemini program, most publicly as CapCom on Gemini 4. Now getting a chance to fly after five years in the program, he said, "I think it will be a lot of fun." Gone in an instant. Every astronaut in the Apollo program had flight experience, and many were test pilots. They were used to seeing machines under development and dealing with delays, and assessing the airplanes' readiness for flight. In the view of many of these astronauts, the Apollo command module just wasn't ready yet. Engineering changes were still in progress as NASA prepared for the countdown test. On his last visit home in Texas, Jan. 22, 1967, Grissom grabbed a lemon off a citrus tree in the backyard. His wife, Betty, asked what he was going to do with it. "I'm going to hang it on that spacecraft," he answered as he kissed her goodbye. He hung it on the flight simulator after he arrived at the Cape. The morning of the test, the crew suited up and detected a foul odor in the breathing oxygen, which took about an hour to fix. Then the communications system acted up. Shouting through the noise, Grissom vented: "How are we going to get to the moon if we can't talk between two or three buildings?" With communications problems dragging on, the practice countdown was held. Then at 6:31 p.m. came a frightening word from the spacecraft: "Fire." , who oversaw crew selections at NASA and was present for the test, could see white flames in a closed-circuit television monitor pointing toward the spacecraft. The crew struggled to get out. Technicians raced to the scene, trying to fight the fire with extinguishers amid faulty breathing masks. At last, the door was open, but it was too late. The aftermath and changes. A NASA review board found a stray spark (probably from damaged wires near Grissom's couch) started the fire in the pure oxygen environment. Fed by flammable features such as nylon netting and foam pads, the blaze quickly spread. [Infographic: How the Apollo 1 Fire Happened] Further, the hatch door — intended to keep the astronauts and the atmosphere securely inside the spacecraft — turned out to be too tough to open under the unfortunate circumstances. The astronauts had struggled in vain to open the door during the fire, but the pressure inside the spacecraft sealed the door and made it impossible to open. The board listed a damning set of circumstances, failures and recommendations for future spacecraft designers to consider. The U.S. Senate conducted its own investigation and hearings and published recommendations of its own, while saying NASA's failure to report its problems with Apollo "was an unquestionably serious dereliction." Several changes were made to the design of the Apollo spacecraft to improve crew safety. The flammable oxygen environment for ground tests was replaced with a nitrogen-oxygen mix. Flammable items were removed. A new respect developed between the astronauts and the contractors concerning design changes, which were implemented more effectively. Most notably, the door was completely redesigned so that it would open in mere seconds when the crew needed to get out in a hurry. [Photos: The Apollo 1 Fire] Decades later, NASA recalls the Apollo 1 incident every January in an annual Day of Remembrance. It also honors the Challenger and Columbia crews, who died in 1986 and 2003, respectively. Further, an exhibit honoring the Apollo 1 crew was opened at the Kennedy Space Center in 2017, displaying the hatches that were on the spacecraft. The exhibit was done in consultation with the astronauts' families. Why Did NASA Still Use Pure Oxygen After the Apollo 1 Fire? On , 1967, the crew of Apollo 1 was killed during a routine pre-launch test. A wire arced in the spacecraft, and that spark turned into a raging fire in the pressurized pure oxygen environment. Eighteen months later, the crew of became the first to fly the revised Apollo spacecraft, but when they removed their helmets in orbit, they did so in a pure oxygen environment. Why, if a pure oxygen environment had claimed the lives of three astronauts already, did NASA not change the cabin environment following the Apollo 1 fire? Well, it did and it didn’t, and the resulting change had as much to do with the Cold War as astronaut safety. Walt Cunningham in orbit. Not long after President Kennedy promised America the Moon on May 25, 1961, NASA released a Request for Proposals to industry contractors hoping to build the spacecraft that would take men to the Moon. Included in the proposal was the provision that the spacecraft environment be a mixed gas one, an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere akin to the air we breathe. In November of 1961, NASA awarded North American Aviation the coveted Apollo contract, and this winning proposal included this mixed gas environment. But a year later NASA changed its mind. As the pieces of Apollo were starting to take shape, weight was fast becoming an issue. Weight is a huge consideration for any mission leaving the Earth. A heavier spacecraft needs a bigger booster to get it off the ground, but if that booster is too big it won’t be able to lift itself off the ground, too. In the case of Apollo, the first stage of the Saturn V rocket had to lift itself and everything on top of it — the second and third stages as well as the command-service and lunar modules — off the ground. Any additional weight at the top of the stack would demand more pounds of thrust at the bottom to get the whole thing on its way to the Moon. ’s Launch. NASA realized that the tanks needed to hold both oxygen and nitrogen along with the associated hardware and plumbing to deliver the gases into the crew cabin came with a significant weight penalty. Not to mention it was complicated. Managing the dual gas environment meant developing a sophisticated sensing system able to detect and react to minute changes in the gas balance, a system that would add weight. A single gas environment, on the other hand, was much simpler and lighter needing only a sensor to monitor that the cabin was remained properly pressurized. Lighter and simpler trumped heavier and more complicated, and NASA reversed its initial decision. Apollo would go to the Moon using pure oxygen in the crew cabin. North American wasn’t keen on the change. For the contractor, the simplicity of a single gas system wasn’t worth the risk. North American knew — as did many engineers at NASA — that a spark in a pure oxygen environment could quickly grow into a raging fire. NASA countered by pointing to the pressure onboard the spacecraft. At just five pounds per square inch, the density was so low that even a pure oxygen environment wouldn’t support a fire a trained crew couldn’t handle. Not to mention, by this point in mid-1962, NASA had launched four Mercury missions using pure oxygen in the cabin without incident. Why change something that wasn’t broken? There was no need to further complicate a spacecraft on a complicated lunar mission. Apollo Boilerplate Command Module. Ultimately, NASA had final say. Director of the Manned Spacecraft Centre Robert Gilruth made the switch from a dual to a single gas environment official with a formal contract change notice signed on August 28, 1962. North American proceeded according to NASA’s direction, but not without incident. In April of 1966, a fire in the environmental control system of a command module under construction caused significant hardware damage, but this didn’t reopen the question of the crew cabin environment. Much of the damage was attributed to a commercial grade strip heater inside the cabin, and since this wan’t flight hardware the fire was largely dismissed. It did, however, prompt North American to revisit the amount and placement of flammable materials in the spacecraft to ensure no combustible materials were too close to electrical systems. NASA also had North American make design changes to eliminate fire hazards stemming from fluid leaks, overheating lamps, and large areas of exposed fabric and foam. But these changes were only made in the lunar-capable Block II model of the Apollo spacecraft, not the earlier Block I model that would fly Earth orbital missions. And Apollo 1 was a Block I Earth orbital flight. So not only was Apollo 1’s spacecraft less fire-resistant than later incarnations on the day of the fire, the atmosphere on the day of the fire wasn’t the same low density of pure oxygen it would be in flight. To mimic the five pounds per square inch in space, the cabin was pressurized to 16 psi at sea level; this created the equivalent pressure difference between the spacecraft and the outside environment. This was the recipe for disaster. During a routine test, a spark ignited all the cabin materials that had been soaking in oxygen for hours. The crew died of smoke inhalation and the spacecraft was destroyed. Damage from the Apollo 1 fire. The Apollo 1 accident investigation prompted NASA to revisit the spacecraft’s pure oxygen environment, the benefits of the simpler and lighter single gas system and a low density flight environment remained. The real problem, NASA reasoned, was the high pressure at sea level, something that only happened before launch. And so the proposal was raised by Max Faget, one of the pioneering engineers behind the blunt body capsule spacecraft, that NASA change the only the launch atmosphere of the spacecraft. He suggested replacing pure oxygen with a mixed gas atmosphere, either oxygen-nitrogen or oxygen-helium in a 60:40 ratio. This mixed atmosphere could be bled out during ascent into orbit and replaced with pure oxygen. It would demand only minimal changes to the spacecraft and wouldn’t affect the crew; they would be breathing their own pure oxygen supply at launch as usual. NASA accepted this proposal on March 14, 1968, and selected nitrogen as the diluting gas there were fewer questions about how onboard systems would interact with nitrogen than helium. Apollo 17 in flight. Apollo went to the Moon with pure oxygen without any further serious incidents, and when the program was canceled NASA finally moved away from pure oxygen in space. The space shuttle and International Space Station programs both took a cue from the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the workhorse that has been flying since the 1960s that has always used a mixed gas environment. All three environments are very air-like with 21 percent oxygen and 79 percent nitrogen at roughly sea level pressure. Ultimately, NASA’s decision to keep the same pure oxygen environment after the Apollo 1 fire boils down to the need to get to the Moon on schedule. Keeping the onboard systems simple and not adding weight were two ways the agency could ensure Apollo was still ready to fly and make it to the Moon by the end of the 1960s. The change to the launch environment, in a way, made the best of a less-than-ideal arrangement, and also ensured the Apollo 1 astronauts’ deaths helped push the agency forward. Sources: The Apollo Spacecraft Chronology; Angle of Attack by Mark Gray; this old blog post of mine about the Apollo 1 fire; Chariots for Apollo by Courtney G. Brooks, James M. Grimwood, and Loyd S. Swenson. Behind the tragedies that helped Apollo 11 succeed. 'Forgotten astronaut' aboard Apollo 11 dead at 90. The Apollo missions and moon landing were one big PR stunt for JFK. This disturbing 'deepfake' video alters Apollo 11 history. Starry-eyed Ron Moore dishes on Apple show 'For All Mankind' The success of Apollo 11 was lauded as one of man’s greatest achievements and sparked a historic surge of support for space exploration that is being revived in modern times. But behind the headlines and an international victory tour were several devastating personal tragedies that have been partially credited with driving the mission. The first was the death of Apollo 11 commander ’s toddler daughter, Karen, from a brain tumor in 1962. According to Armstrong’s only authorized biographer, James Hansen, the shadow of Karen’s death at the age of 2 haunted him throughout his life, including during some of his most momentous periods. Hansen said this showed during “the Giant Step tour” for the returned Apollo 11 pilots, which stopped in “all the major capitals of the world.” “When they were in London, there was an event at Buckingham Palace. And the astronauts were on stage,” Hansen said during an interview to promote the film “First Man,” based on his biography. Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin meet Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in London on Oct. 14, 1969. AP. While the trio was waiting at a press event to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, Armstrong was drawn to help a woman and her child. “There was an English woman and her child, a little blond 2- or 3-year-old child, who was in the audience. And the little girl was crying,” Hansen said. “Neil got off the stage, went over to the mother and the child, took the child, started to talk to the child. The mother gave him the child to hold. He comforted her and smiled at her, gave her back to the mother, came back on stage.” Hansen said: “To me, events like that, things like that, suggest something about Armstrong and the emotional connection that had to be. It had to be the daughter coming back into his life in some respect.” see also. My time tracking Apollo 11 from a tiny island in the middle of the sea. “It was mentioned in the press. Although, the connection between doing that and his own daughter was not mentioned in any of the press coverage because they were unaware that he even had a daughter,” Hansen said. “Those things were very powerful for me as a biographer.” Armstrong and indeed the wider space community were also starkly influenced by the deaths of several of their peers in the Apollo 1 tragedy, in which three crew members died during a fire in a simulated launch in February 1967. The accident was also a devastating blow for the families left behind, who at times felt like it was not given sufficient attention in the years that followed. Bonnie White Baer, whose mother, Patricia, suffered from depression after the death of her husband, mission commander Ed White, said recent attention had helped their recovery. Patricia White took her own life in 1991. American astronaut Edward White checks procedures in the spacecraft prior to escape training for the Gemini 4 mission, in which he would be the first man to “walk” in space. Getty Images. “I think for a long time it was a little bit of a sore subject, about Apollo 1,” White Baer said in an interview to promote “First Man,” which partially told her mother’s story. “It’s been somewhat, with my family, not great. But, they just now started doing some things,” such as an Apollo 1 memorial, she said. “That was a long time coming, but they did finally do it so I’m happy. But, a lot of the stuff really was sort of, nobody wanted to talk about it because it was sort of a failure and a bad subject. It was hard. I think it’s well past time but certainly time that this story is out there.” And all of this, of course, took place against a backdrop of a nation grieving for the loss of two members of its first family. It had been President John F. Kennedy’s desire to conquer space before the end of the 1960s. After his assassination in 1963, and that of his brother, Robert Kennedy, Americans were reeling, according to NASA’s chief historian, Bill Barry. ‘Fire in the spacecraft!’: The Apollo 1 tragedy that killed three astronauts in 1967. The three astronauts were sealed inside the spacecraft. They were 10 minutes away from a simulated liftoff to practice what would happen less than a month later for real. It was 6:31 p.m. on Jan. 27, 1967, when a fire started in Apollo 1 killing Air Force Col. Virgil I. Grissom, one of the seven original Mercury astronauts; Air Force Col. Edward White II, the first American to walk in space; and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Roger B. Chaffee, a rookie awaiting his first flight in space. The capsule in which Apollo 1 astronauts , Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed when a flash fire broke out in the pure oxygen atmosphere on January 27, 1967, during a launch pad test at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. (NASA.gov) The simulation, according to newspaper reports at the time, had started in the morning on Jan. 27 at Cape Kennedy. The astronauts entered the spacecraft at 1 p.m. The hatch was closed at 2:50 p.m. At 6:31 p.m. one of the astronauts said, “Fire in the spacecraft!” “A split second later, fire ‘that originated from inside the cabin’ penetrated to the outside of the spacecraft and surrounded the moonship in an instant. Emergency crews had the Apollo doors opened in 5 minutes but were confronted with intense heat and dense smoke. The three astronauts “apparently died instantly.” This 1967 file photo shows the charred interior of the Apollo I spacecraft after a fire which killed astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Virgil Grissom on Jan. 27, 1967. A NASA official said the rehearsal had reached 10 minutes away from a simulated blastoff, one of many tests that was to precede the planned flight in the next month. (AP Photo) AP. The tragedy of Apollo 1 was the first fatalities for NASA. Three other pilots had died but all in off-duty accidents. Grissom was the second American to fly in space. He was the pilot of the second flight on July 21, 1961, and the command pilot of Gemini 3 on March 23, 1965. The Gemini mission made three revolutions around the earth. White was the first American astronaut to walk in space. He was the pilot of Gemini 4. His space "walk" was on June 3, 1965. Chaffee was preparing for his first space flight. After the Apollo disaster, NASA overhauled the Apollo spacecraft with a quick-release hatch, removing everything flammable from inside the module and no longer using pure oxygen. According to a story by United Press International, The Patriot on Jan. 29, 1967, “World’s Mighty, Little People Mourn Deaths of Astronauts” The charred interior of the Apollo I spacecraft shown after the flash fire that killed astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Virgil Grissom, January 27, 1967. (AP Photo) ASSOCIATED PRESS. “A wave of shock and sorrow at the death of America’s first Apollo astronauts yesterday circled the globe their spaceships had conquered. The irony that these men, whose goal was the moon, should die only 200 feet from the ground was hard to bear.” President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “Three valiant young men have given their lives in the nation’s service,” he said. “We mourn this great loss and our hearts go out to their families.” Former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, said, “A tragic loss to the whole nation.” A horse drawn caisson bearing the body of astronaut Virgil Grissom rolls through nearby Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Jan. 31, 1967. Walking beside the flag-draped casket as honor pallbearers are astronauts, from left on this side of caisson, Marine Col. , Air Force Col. , Navy Cmdr. ; from left on far side of casket, Donald Slayton, Navy Capt. Alan Sheperd and Navy Cmdr. . Grissom was killed in the Apollo 1 fire on launch pad on Jan. 27. (AP Photo) AP. Astronauts for the first Apollo Mission (L-R) Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee. (NASA.gov) Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work . Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission. Disclaimer. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your Privacy Rights (User Agreement updated 1/1/21. Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement updated 5/1/2021). © 2021 Advance Local Media LLC. All rights reserved (About Us). The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. 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