Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 53 Years Ago Today

Today is the 53rd anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, which claimed the lives of Astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Virgil “Gus” Grissom. They were running a simulation of their projected flight, and an electrical spark ignited a fire in the pure oxygen atmosphere of their space capsule.
Nothing worthwhile is without risk. I’m sure that Gus, Roger, and Ed would agree. Through the tragedy that claimed their lives, many lessons were learned, which ultimately put man’s footprints on the moon two and a half years later.
May they Rest In Peace, and long may their memory remain.
7mm

I remember it well, very sad day. The end of pure O2 in capsules.

I was only 9 yrs. old at the time, but remember it so well. May the heroes of Apollo 1 Rest in Peace.

Northrop repeatedly warned NASA of the danger of filling the cockpit with pure oxygen. Northrop had burned up X planes by filling them with pure oxygen. NADA threatened to kick Northrop out of the space program if they persisted with the earnings

Remember it well.... I was 16 at the time. Also recall the justified uproar about the pure O2. What a shame they didn't change that before we lost those 3 great astronauts.

Hero’s, all three of them.
I remember it well.

Another problem was it took a couple of minutes to unscrew the hatch co they could get out.

Ironically, this was supposed to be a safety feature. Gus Grissom's Mercury capsule had blown the hatch after it landed in the ocean and he almost drowned. The solution was to make it hard to open the hatch.

The worst NASA design faux pas in my opinion was the Space Shuttle design. It was the only US or Russian manned spacecraft that had no escape mechanism. All previous and subsequent spacecraft have excape rockets to whisk an astronaut capsule away from the booster rockets in the event the latter explode.

I remember that day, I was 13

Remember reading the Dallas paper account... Was a 20 year old Infantry Medic, working at Dispensary #4 Fort Hood....

From the stuff I have read over the years, they claim that Grissom was the best pilot of the bunch. He was surely snake bit though. In one launch attempt the rockets fired but not properly and he did a manual shut down on the pad, which they claimed averted major disaster. The near drowning episode on landing, and then the fire.