![]() The Apollo 1 accident review board determined that a wire over the piping from the urine collection system had arced. Over the next two months, the spacecraft was disassembled piece by piece in an attempt to isolate the cause of the fire. In mission control, the telemetry and voice communication from Apollo 1 went completely silent.Īn hour and a half later, firemen and emergency personnel succeeded in removing the bodies Ed White was turned around on his couch reaching for the hatch. Many continued to fight their way towards the spacecraft but were forced to retreat as the smoke grew too thick to see through. Men wrestling with the hatch were thrown across the room as flames and smoke spilled into the White Room. Just three seconds after the crew’s garbled report of a fire, the pressure inside the cabin became so great that the hull ruptured. The men in mission control watched helplessly as the scene played out on the live video feed. It was an inward opening design, and neither engineers outside the spacecraft nor the astronauts inside were strong enough to force it open. ![]() Engineers in the White Room tried to get the hatch open but couldn’t. We’re burning up.” The static made it impossible to hear the exact words or even distinguish who was speaking.īut flames visible through the command module’s small porthole window left no doubt about what the crew had said. Open ‘er up” or “we’ve got a bad fire - let’s get out. The transmission was unclear, but the panic was obvious as an astronaut yelled something like “they’re fighting a bad fire - let’s get out. The telemetry was accompanied by a garbled transmission that sounded like “fire.” The official record reflects the communications problem. Engineers in mission control saw an increase in oxygen flow and pressure inside the cabin. Just after 6:31 that evening, the routine test took a turn. An increasingly frustrated Grissom began to question how they were expected to get to the Moon if they couldn’t talk between a few buildings. Static made it impossible for the crew and mission control to hear one another. But these were minor problems and didn’t raise any red flags in mission control. Grissom’s complaint of a smell like sour buttermilk in the oxygen circulating through his suit was resolved after a short hold, and a high oxygen flow through the astronauts suits tripped an alarm. For the next five and a half hours, the test proceeded with only minor interruptions. ![]() Grissom, White, and Chaffee suited up and entered the Apollo 1 command module at 1pm and hooked into the spacecraft’s oxygen and communications systems. A crew of engineers monitored the spacecraft and were just feet away from the astronauts. The White Room, the room through which the astronauts entered the spacecraft, remained pressed next to the vehicle. With everything just as it would be on February 21, the crew went through a full simulation of countdown and launch.Ī full launch-day staff of engineers in mission control also went through the simulation. The cabin was pressurized with 16.7 pounds per square inch (psi) of 100 percent oxygen, a pressure slightly greater than one atmosphere. The umbilical power cords that usually supplied power were removed - the plugs were out - and the spacecraft switched over to battery power. The spacecraft was fully assembled and stacked on top of its unfuelled Saturn IB launch vehicle on pad 34. One routine test NASA had done since Mercury was the “plugs out” test, a final check of the spacecraft’s systems. He was a notoriously good guy who took pains to thank everyone for their contributions to Apollo right down to the janitors.īy the end of January 1967, the crew was going through their final prelaunch tests barring some major setback, they would make the first manned Apollo flight on February 21. Rounding out the crew was pilot Roger Chaffee, a talented rookie more than capable of holding his own with his experienced crew mates. He flew again in Gemini in a spacecraft he named “Molly Brown.” Senior pilot on the Apollo 1 crew was Ed White, a Gemini veteran who made America’s first spacewalk in 1965. The commander for Apollo 1 was Gus Grissom, one of the original Mercury astronauts whose first spaceflight was marred by his capsule’s sinking after splashdown. The Apollo 1 crew could have been saved from a gruesome death. There were warning signs, similar accidents that had claimed lives both in the United States and abroad. Today marks the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, a tragic and preventable accident. A routine prelaunch test turned fatal when a fire ripped through the spacecraft’s crew cabin killing all three astronauts. NASA’s Apollo program began with one of the worst disasters the organization has ever faced.
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