Most take for granted when the space shuttle goes up these days. Most don’t remember or were even born 40 years ago today when the three man crew of Apollo 1 died in a fire. The article linked below contains a riveting, chilling, nearly second by second account of what happened. What’s so amazing is how fast everything happened.
APOLLO 1 — The Fire — 27 January 1967
The first manned Apollo mission was scheduled for launch on 21 February 1967 at Cape Kennedy Launch Complex 34. However, the death of the prime crew in a command module fire during a practice session on 27 January 1967 put America’s lunar landing program on hold.
The crew consisted of Lt. Colonel Virgil Ivan “Gus” Grissom (USAF), command pilot; Lt. Colonel Edward Higgins White, II (USAF), senior pilot; and Lt. Commander Roger Bruce Chaffee (USN), pilot.
Earlier in the Plugs Out Integrated Test, the crew reported that a particular movement, the nature of which was unspecified, provided increased flow rate.
This was also confirmed from the flow rate data records. The flow rate showed a gradual rise at 23:30:24 GMT which reached the limit of the sensor at 23:30:59 GMT.
At 23:30:54.8 GMT, a significant voltage transient was recorded. The records showed a surge in the AC Bus 2 voltage. Several other parameters being measured also showed anomalous behavior at this time.
Beginning at 23:31:04.7 GMT, the crew gave the first verbal indication of an emergency when they reported a fire in the command module.
Mistakes were indeed made. These three fellows were however ready to accept the risks. Brave beyond belief. Those of you know old enough to remember (yeah I’m old) missed out on this golden age, where almost anything was possible. The loss of these lives were a tragedy, but the march to the moon continued as you all know. Some question if we could pull this off today if we wanted to.
NASA is one of this country’s crown jewels. It is an inspiration for courage, technology, and wonder. It is an example of what makes us great as a nation.
Some question if we could pull this off today if we wanted to.
I doubt it. Just like if WWII happened today, we wouldn’t have had the out pouring of support they had then. With a populous with the attention span of American Idol and Survivor, a moon landing wouldn’t cut the mustard. What a shame.
40 years! Wow! Thanks for posting this. Nice reminder….
I have a question for everyone.
Will this country always have our technological edge or will we someday fall behind other countries who seem to value math, science and engineering more than we do?
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
Sorry, on that last post I had a typo in my web address.
But this new post gives me a chance to clarify the question. The readers of this blog obviously care about math, science and engineering. I was speaking about the nation as a whole.
Again, thanks for taking the time to respond.
For Dan F. – It’s a race, and no matter what the tortoise claims, races go to the fast, who tend to hunger for the win. A country too complacent to compete in any form of manufacturing (instead moving facilities offshore while the neocons blame it on newly unemployed workers), that confuses education with prepping kids to pass specific tests because school budgets depend on it, that confuses conservatism with whatever the neocons pitched lately from K Street… a country like that is just waiting to be sheared. I mean, is watching TV as the shearing proceeds.
Doesn’t look good to me. Then again, it was always hungry immigrants who drove what was best in the U.S. Between the Asians and the Hispanics, maybe we’ll see that kind of drive again. That’s if politicians will stop distorting the data we do have. (Anybody remember the EPA shredding stacks of reports from the “DO NOT READ” pile when the Dems took over congress?) Now Bush has declared he has authority to block any report from seeing the light of day if he wants to, and people here are defending that position as though the presidunce, not the American people who paid for the research, owns the findings.
Nope. Won’t be competitive anytime soon, not while anti-reality politicians and bureaucratic hacks continue running things.
I disagree when uncle Dave says that ‘most won’t remember’ Apollo 1. I agree that most people who weren’t born then won’t remember, but many will also not remember Challenger, and only a few will remember Columbia!!! But I think that’s more to do with your country lack of enthusiasm for space exploration these days. The Shuttle goes up, *almost* routinely, and nobody cares what those *heroes* are doing up there! They’re learning how to work in Space! How to build structures! How to live there! We need this knowledge if we are to survive as a species. I see signs in the US that this complacence may be changing, but they’re still few.
And yes, these people who died understood the risks. they knew they could die, although they didn’t have any death wish. They were (and are) normal people just like us. And they are heroes, all of them, American and Soviet.
#5 – We have already lost it. Imternational surveys of math and science skills by country rank the US consistently in the 20s, with many Asian and European countries ranked ahead of us.
Europe, not the US, is surging ahead in particle physics. Many of the latest advancements in mathematics are coming from India, which will soon be the second country to put a man on the moon.
#10 – thanks, I had fogotten India announced a Moon mission a few years ago – late 1990s, was it? I googled for “India manned Moon mission” and found they successfully recovered a reentry vehicle and several satellites from splash-down in the Bay of Bengal earlier this month. That’s serious space technology. See http://tinyurl.com/2knuv6
Russia has a Moon base planned for 2012, according to Newsweek, and China is also eying a manned Moon mission. Both think they may be able to mine Helium 3 there for use in fusion reactors. Japan also has a Moon program. And of course Bush wants to pull \money out of U.S. taxpayers for a new Moon mission. (Costs of his Iraq adventure and the general corporate looting of the American economy hasn’t packed enough debt yet onto the U.S. middle class, apparently. The pogram would be more appealing if the U.S. still had a surplus.)
A good Newsweek review of various Moon programs is at http://tinyurl.com/ynwr3q for anyone interested.
What neither piece really explains is – why now? What’s changed to make it into a race again?
The original space program (Gemini, Apollo, etc) was a panic response to the early Soviet satellite launches, combined with a jobs program and corporate welfare. We won’t get serious again about space until it’s time for another panic (i.e. Chinese-Indian moon base ringed with missiles pointed at New York).
I always thought that Gus Grissom got a bad deal all the way around. Gus received the blame for sinking his capsule during the second Mercury mission, although we now know that it was a capsule with serious design flaws.
Gus and his colleagues were killed by defective wiring in the Apollo misison and even then they might have survived if the capsule hatch had been designed to open outward instead of inward. NASA fixed it, but too late to save Gus, Ed, or Roger.
Gus Grissom and Alan Shepard were the bravest of men. They entered space when nobody knew if they would even survive. By the time that Superhero John Glenn came along, Gus and Alan had risked their lives and we already knew that Mercury would work.
If America truly honored its space heroes, Gus Grissom and Alan Shepard would be standing at the very top of the heap.
I’m 48 and I remember when and where I was when it happened. You see I’m from Indianapolis and Gus was the Indiana boy made good. If you ever have a chance go and visit Gus’s grave at Arlington.
Randy
As far as me being a member here, I am glad though that I am a member. When the article was published I received a username and password, so that I could participate in Comments, That would explain me stumbuling upon this post. But we’re certainly all intellectuals.
You should consider starting an email list. It would take your site to its potential.
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