Posted on 01/27/2007 3:27:53 PM PST by WestVirginiaRebel
Edited on 01/27/2007 3:42:26 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
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.
Those 40 years went quick.
Chaffee and White are buried at Arlington. White is buried at West Point. A plaque is installed on Launch Pad 34 in memory of the three astronauts. It reads:
They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind's final frontier. Remember them not for how they died but for those ideals for which they lived.
Another plaque nearby is inscribed with the Latin phrase Ad Astra Per Aspera, A rough road leads to the stars.
I bow my head in silent salute to three men who gave their lives so that a 12-year-old boy would forever look to the stars.
I remember hearing those terrible news reports like it was yesterday. What brave trail blazers those men were. R.I.P. you gallant men.
When I read the description of the fire, my first reaction was, "How could they have done things that way?" Designed the lock to swing in instead of out? Used a 16-psi oxygen atmosphere, even after the Air Force had experienced a similar fire in a 16-psi oxygen atmosphere just a few weeks before? Not included some over-pressure relief valve of some kind?
Yes, if those disastrous mistakes hadn't been found when they were, disaster would have struck later during the Apollo missions. But I can only ask, what were the designers thinking? This isn't just 20/20 hindsight. Part of the design job is to ask, what might go wrong? The designers were critically short on imagination. It's a real tragedy that three astronauts had to pay for that lack.
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NEVER FORGET
And now...
the same Democrat Congress that abandoned Freedom for a Free South Vietnam at the purse strings long ago,
...is pushing hard to do the same to a Free Iraq now.
Repeating:
Pictures of a vientamese Re-Education (SLAVE LABOR) Camp
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
While aiming to also cut NASA's Budget deep enough to kill President BUSH'S Program to finally return Americans to Earth's Moon and then launch on to the Planet Mars.
As Democrat President JFK just rolls right over in his Arlington Cemetary Grave.
For...
...the Enemy is now Within
...and always has been.
NEVER FORGET
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Would you add me, if I'm not in already. 'Don't think I was pinged. Thanks.
Thank you for the post. My son just finished a report on a later astronaut, James B. Irwin. These were/are really amazing people.
Hand Salute............two
Very sad, and something that ought to never have happened.
Gagarin was a cosmonaut, not an astronaut. Therefore, Grissom was the second.
Semantics!!!
Lets not forget the astronauts that no one ever seems to remember:
Elliott See and Charles Bassett
Bassett and pilot Elliott See died on February 28, 1966, in the crash of a T-38 trainer jet. The jet crashed into a building at the Lambert Field airport in St. Louis, Missouri not long before Gemini 9 flew. A NASA investigative panel later concluded that pilot error, caused by poor visibility due to bad weather, was the principal cause of the accident. The panel concluded that See was flying too low to the ground during his approach, probably as a result of the poor visibility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bassett
A noble thought. The only problem is the corrosion effects at the launchpad will have it rusting away in 18 months!
I forgot Theodore Freedman and Clifton Williams also astronauts that died before ever getting into orbit.
That's a great picture. It looks like it could have been taken yesterday.
What's amazing is that two and a half years afterward we had a successful mission to the Moon.
Wow, no kidding! Gus was a favorite of mine.
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