Episode 56: The Tragedy of Apollo 1 (The Apollo Program 1)

 

55 years ago, last January, the crew of Apollo 1 (left to right Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee) strapped into their command module for what should have been a routine low-risk test. They never left the module, dying in a fire and that seems to have been as inevitable as it was unexpected. Many red flags before the tragedy were ignored which led to plenty of finger pointing after the fact. What should have been the triumphal first act for the program that was to take Americans to the moon, nearly killed the space race in the United States. But in the end, this wakeup call may have been what ultimately saved the Apollo Program and turned it into the success it was.

After the fire, which only lasted a few minutes, the interior of the Apollo 1 command module was unrecognizable, even to those who were most familiar with it.

The crew died of asphyxiation in less than a minute after their oxygen hoses were burned through and cut them off from their source of fresh air. The subsequent autopsies showed that the flight suits provided enough protection for the astronauts that their burn would have likely been survivable (and probably occurred post-mortem).

Everyone involved in the program knew there were a lot of issues with the spacecraft, though most either thought they would eventually be worked out (because everything in Project Mercury and Project Gemini had just kind of worked out in the end) or choose to ignore them. As a joke, the crew sent the above photo to Apollo spacecraft administration manager Joseph Shea - who had given the module a provisional passing grade but ordered a lot of flammable material removed from the cabin (it never was) - and inscribed it with the following: "It isn't that we don't trust you, Joe, but this time we've decided to go over your head."