NASA Marks 40 Years Since Apollo Deaths

CBS & AP ^ | January 27, 2007 | MIKE SCHNEIDER Associated Press Writer

[WestVirginiaRebel]

This should be better remembered than it is. God bless all those who sacrificed for their country.

[billorites]

Wow.

Those 40 years went quick.

[IronJack]

I've read considerably on the Apollo 1 incident. One of the things history did not publish is the fact that the microphone from the capsule to Command was open. Roger Chaffee, in the rightmost seat, was supposed to maintain communications with Ground Control if an emergency broke out. All he managed to say was "There's a fire in the capsule." Within 18 seconds, all three men were dead. Autopsies showed that they died of smoke inhalation, not burns, although their bodies did suffer extensive burn damage.

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.

[Pyro7480]

[KevinDavis]

[appleharvey]

I remember hearing those terrible news reports like it was yesterday. What brave trail blazers those men were. R.I.P. you gallant men.

[JoeFromSidney]

"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."

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.

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.

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

.

[onedoug]

Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee with God.

Would you add me, if I'm not in already. 'Don't think I was pinged. Thanks.

[TXBubba]

Thank you for the post. My son just finished a report on a later astronaut, James B. Irwin. These were/are really amazing people.

[bmwcyle]

Hand Salute............two

[OldFriend]

Brother in law was an engineer on the Cape that day. He told us that the entire facility was locked down and the FBI arrived to investigate the accident. Wanting to be sure it was an accident and not sabotage.

Very sad, and something that ought to never have happened.

[Central Scrutiniser]

Gus Grissom, the second US astronaut in space...
Sloppy writing from the press.

[Pyro7480]

Gagarin was a cosmonaut, not an astronaut. Therefore, Grissom was the second.

[Central Scrutiniser]

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

[mcmuffin]

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.

A noble thought. The only problem is the corrosion effects at the launchpad will have it rusting away in 18 months!

[Central Scrutiniser]

I forgot Theodore Freedman and Clifton Williams also astronauts that died before ever getting into orbit.

[Moonman62]

That's a great picture. It looks like it could have been taken yesterday.

[Moonman62]

What's amazing is that two and a half years afterward we had a successful mission to the Moon.

[mombonn]

Those 40 years went quick.

Wow, no kidding! Gus was a favorite of mine.