Remembering Apollo 1
It was supposed to be a relatively easy preflight test, but things had not been going well for the crew of Apollo 1. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee had entered the Apollo capsule at 1 p.m. on Jan. 27, 1967, and had been plagued by a continuous series of minor glitches. The spacecraft was in a “plugs-out” test, and the plan was to go through an entire countdown sequence without an actual launch. After numerous communication problems with Mission Control, a frustrated Grissom remarked, “How are we going to get to the moon if we can’t talk between two or three buildings!” The communication problems forced a hold in the count at 5:40 p.m.
Suddenly, at 6:31 p.m., something went terribly wrong. Ed White said, “Fire in the cockpit.”
In the next 17 seconds, television monitors showed White attempting to open the hatch, but it could only open inward and the interior pressure of the cabin made a quick escape impossible. It was also tightly secured by several latches. Garbled transmissions from the crew sounded like, “We’ve got a bad fire — let’s get out. We’re burning up.” Technicians tried to get to the capsule, but were driven back by the intense heat and smoke. The final transmission from the crew was a cry of pain.
It took nearly five minutes before technicians succeeded in opening the hatch, and nothing could prepare them for the grisly scene it revealed. The three astronauts lay dead in the charred interior of the capsule, and the heat had been so intense that Grissom and White’s spacesuits were fused together.
The procedure for an emergency escape was that Grissom would lower White’s headrest to enable him to unstrap his harness and open the latches, and Chaffee was to shut down the spacecraft and maintain communications until exiting. The technicians found that White was nearly out of his harness, and Chaffee was still strapped to his seat. In the last moments of their lives the men had apparently followed the protocol in trying to escape rather than thrashing around in frenzied panic. That came as no surprise to those who knew them well.
An investigation concluded that faulty wiring inside the craft had been the primary cause of the fire and, during a one-year program delay, NASA implemented nearly 100 design changes. The vastly improved Apollo spacecraft that resulted eventually enabled us to safely land on the moon. Former NASA flight director Chris Kraft acknowledged the sacrifice of the Apollo 1 crew. “I hesitate to say this but I have to say it. I don’t think we would’ve gotten to the moon in the ’60’s if we had not had the fire.”
On Oct. 5, 2017, Vice President Mike Pence addressed NASA employees at the Kennedy Space Center and revealed the Trump administration’s plans for human space exploration. “We will return American astronauts to the moon,” Pence said, “Not only to leave behind footprints and flags but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond.”
A test launch of the NASA Orion spacecraft that will return astronauts to the moon is targeted for 2020. As we start to prepare Orion for these expeditions, it’s important to remember what happened 51 years ago at Launch Pad 34 in Cape Canaveral, and to accept the inherent risks of our imminent explorations.
Prophetically, just a few weeks before he died, Gus Grissom said, “We’re in a risky business, and we hope if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”
In the southern hemisphere of Mars, three hills were discovered by the robotic Spirit rover. NASA named them the Grissom, White and Chaffee Hills.
Someday in the distant future, I’m certain that astronauts will stand at the base of these hills. I hope that they gaze up at the tiny, blue, star-like Earth shining brightly in the Martian night sky, and give a word of thanks to the crew of Apollo 1 before they begin their exploration of the hills named to honor the Apollo 1 crew. For if they know the story of Apollo 1, they will certainly realize that they are standing on the surface of another planet because of the sacrifice of Grissom, White and Chaffee, and the pursuit of the ideals for which they lived.