back to article NASA honors Apollo 1 crew 50 years after deadly launchpad fire

On Friday, NASA unveiled a new memorial for Command Pilot Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward White II, and Pilot Roger Chaffee, who perished when fire broke out in their Apollo 1 capsule. Youtube Video The three were running a test of the capsule on January 27, 1967 ahead of its first flight the following month, with …

  1. Bubba Von Braun

    Tough and Competent..

    Its one tough week in history.. Lets hope the lessons are learned, spaceflight has an ultimate response to arrogance and hubris. All three incidents have their root causes embedded squarely in this.

    And to the folks watching what comes next, know that risks are necessary and while we should do everything to minimize them, sometimes the ultimate price gets paid.

    The next generation coming through are smart and tough, but I am not so certain they grasp the accountable yet.

    I keep the following quote on my office wall;

    Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it.

    We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work.

    Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, "Dammit, stop!"

    We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.

    From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: "Tough and Competent." Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for.

    Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills.

    Time will tell.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Smith, Scobee, McNair, McAuliffe, Reznik, Onizuka, Jarvis. Anderson,Brown, Chawla, Clark,Husband, McCool, Ramon.

    Say their names.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Important nitpick...

    "The capsule was flooded with pure oxygen and sparks from exposed circuitry ignited the gas."

    Whatever ignited was obviously not oxygen!

    Theories suggest the source of the fire was a leaky ethylene glycol-filled cooling line that was in close proximity to damaged electrical wiring.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      Re: Important nitpick...

      Nylon webbing and Velcro had been added well beyond spec by astronauts and launch pad crew. This was to hold things that flew around during ascent and zero g. Harmless with normal atmosphere or orbital pure oxygen pressure of 5-6 lbs/square inch.

      However, during the fatal test, the capsule was filled with pure oxygen to normal atmospheric pressure at sea level, and then a further 5-6 lbs/square inch of oxygen to simulate relative pressure within the capsule vs. The vacuum of space. At that combined pressure of pure oxygen, all that Velcro and nylon burned fiercely.

      Following the accident, I believe NASA reverted to using normal atmosphereic gases instead of oxygen. Plenty enough for the crew to breath, still worked to test retention of pressure , and no increased flammability of materials in the capsule.

      1. Mark 85

        Re: Important nitpick...

        The incident reports form NASA pointed out a lot of failings including this. The electronics and electrical systems didn't have conformal coating on many electrified bits, wire debris from building out the capsule was present in the areas of the terminal strips. The next capsule had major attention given to these areas also

    2. Bubba Von Braun

      Re: Important nitpick...

      If you look beyond the "ignition" most anything will burn in 100% oxygen atmosphere even metals.

      There were so many faults in the Block 1 spacecraft, and it goes to the point that bad managers over-rule techs. And Joe Shea had pointed out the way too much velcro ahead of the test, so bad was the Block 1 that the Block 2 redesign was almost a completely new capsule right down to changes in the guidance computer design, everything got touched/reviewed.

      The dangers were well known of a 100% oxygen atmosphere, but hubris said we did it for Mercury, we did it for Gemini its simpler and lighter.. were the arguments, much like the cold affecting Challenger or the debris hitting Columbia, we have done it before it will be fine, right up to the point it isnt.

      Block 2 spacecraft used nitrogen/oxygen during launch and migrated to 100% oxygen on ascent, with a reduction of pressure from 14psi down to 5psi.

      The Apollo 1 test was running at 16PSI as a leak check!! Not only was it 100% oxygen it was pressurized above ambient pressure!!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Important nitpick...

      Did you never do the experiment at school where you made pure hydrogen, and pure oxygen by electrolysis, then put a smouldering split in them to test the presence of the gasses?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Important nitpick...

        "Did you never do the experiment at school where you made pure hydrogen, and pure oxygen by electrolysis, then put a smouldering split in them to test the presence of the gasses?"

        Indeed I did. The point I was making is that it was not the oxygen that ignited, as claimed in the article. Oxygen promotes burning, but you need a fuel source!

        It's the old fire triangle: fuel, oxygen & heat. Miss one of those components and you can't start a fire.

        In the case of the experiment you mentioned, the glowing splint provides the necessary activation energy (heat) to ignite the hydrogen gas (fuel) in the presence of atmospheric oxygen, resulting in a mini explosion, or pop.

        Meanwhile, when the glowing splint (heat) is introduced to a test tube of pure oxygen, the burning reaction is accelerated to the point where the splint (fuel) reignites in flame.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Important nitpick...

          It's the old fire triangle: fuel, oxygen & heat. Miss one of those components and you can't start a fire.

          Not true.

          A pyrophoric substance will ignite spontaneously upon being exposed to air. Many fine metal powders are pyrophoric, for example.

          A hypergolic compound pair will ignite spontaneously upon coming into contact.

          A lot of rocket motors use hypergolic fuels - either as the main propellant, or as a hypergolic plug to start the reaction between a less reactive fuel/oxidizer pair.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Important nitpick...

            Pyrophoric and hypergolic substances still require some heat to ignite, just much less than other materials. They also need oxygen to burn, so the heat triangle still applies. In the case of hypergolics the oxygen is in the form of an oxidising agent as opposed to ambient air.

            Anyway, these particular outliers are irrelevant to the Apollo 1 accident.

        2. Stevie

          Re: Important nitpick...

          "Oxygen promotes burning but requires a fuel source"

          I own a chemistry textbook from the mid 1930s which depicts the apparatus needed and the procedure required to demonstrate simultaneously:

          a) Hydrogen burning in a pure oxygen atmosphere and

          2) Oxygen burnng in a pure hydrogen atmosphere.

          Don't have the book to hand so I can't give you the title etc, (I'm about 1200 miles away from the trunk it is stored in right now).

          Minor glass blowing is required in addition to the makings of hydrogen (acid and zinc granules probably but I can't remember off the top of my head) and the oxygen by heating some cooperative chemical. Electrolysis was not convenient when the book was compiled, it seems.

  4. Herby

    Oxygen is interesting stuff!!

    In normal atmosphere, it at a partial pressure of about 3 PSI. Things get interesting at higher pressures. A typical forge will use bellows air (which may increase the partial pressure to a bit more (6 PSI?), and then the coals do glow a bit hotter (there are several forging videos on you tube). Take things up to 100% Oxygen and you get a partial pressure around 15 PSI. Put just about anything in this, and if it starts reacting, it will keep going. The Apollo 1 capsule was pressurized to 5 PSI over atmospheric, for a total of about 20 PSI, and at that level LOTS of things burn. The concentration is around 6-7 times the normal atmosphere we breathe, and things will be go up in smoke. A welder's gas mix gets close to this and if you use a cutting torch, you can even turn OFF the acetylene after the cut is started, and the iron will burn quite nicely (and quickly) in such concentrations. Then you have what is inside the capsule, and with a small spark and 7 times the normal Oxygen, ANYTHING will go up in smoke, and VERY quickly at that.

    A bunch of lessons were learned from the Apollo fire, and considering that all subsequent Apollo astronauts got home safely, it worked out OK.

    The Apollo 13 "we've had a problem" is also related to Oxygen, it was a small spark inside an Oxygen tank (100% Oxygen again at high pressures) and things burned, and burned well.

    Oxygen is dangerous, but combine it with other things, and you have "instant fire". Enough said.

    We salute you who dies to make the space program what it is!

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Oxygen is interesting stuff!!

      Its not the partial pressure you have to worry about - pure oxygen at 3psi in your wood burner at home and your wood burner itself will burn. At 15psi it will just bur 5 times faster.

      Nitrogen, apart from making Guinness fine, at 80% of air normally has a moderating effect and reduces the temperature achieved in fire. You can generate free hydrogen by running a diesel engine on pure oxygen generated by electrolysis from the increase in thermal efficiency of burning diesel in pure oxygen. Until the motor melts.

    2. GBE

      Re: Oxygen is interesting stuff!!

      "A welder's gas mix gets close to this and if you use a cutting torch, you can even turn OFF the acetylene after the cut is started, and the iron will burn quite nicely (and quickly) in such concentrations."

      Yep, the acetylene is only needed to pre-heat the corner of the edge of the steel steel to the point where it won't quench when you pull the trigger that lets the O2 out full-blast. It's hard to imagine how impressive the process is until you've done it. Once you get the metal itself burning under a stream of mostly pure O2, a torch that could barely weld 1/4" plate will cut though 2" of steel like butter.

      [Everybody should learn to weld. I never got very good at it, but it was great fun -- though I don't think I'd last long welding pipe at a refinery on the gulf coast in August.]

  5. Gene Cash Silver badge

    We really were hurt by the loss of Gus Grissom. He was Slayton's pick for First Man on the Moon, and he had a much better and more outgoing personality than Armstrong.

    So we ended up with a guy that essentially disappeared after his historic event, instead of one that would have talked the program up and possibly helped it continue.

    Also, if we'd known about Valentin Bondarenko, perhaps we would have taken more care. Maybe not.

    1. Fred Dibnah

      It seems that NASA knew the risks of a fire, whether or not they knew about Bondarenko:

      http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4204/ch18-2.html

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    There have been rumors that this happened after one of the pilots started to question feasibility.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      You mean the God of Feasibility was angered?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        >> You mean the God of Feasibility was angered?

        Well, that's certainly feasible...

        Nope, the honourable AC is watering that hardiest of perennials: the late-blooming Moon Landing Hoax. Because obviously Grissom's bitter jokes about lemons were his way of telegraphing that he was about to blow the whistle on the hoax, so pour encourager les autres NASA incinerated him along with Chaffee and White. This is incidentally how we know that the fake landings were filmed by Stanley Kubrick - had NASA stuck with their original choice of Coppola then Grissom would have been warned off with the good old horse's-head-in-the-bed.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    oxygen toxicity

    The pure-oxygen Apollo tests were an extremely bad idea on many levels. Besides the increased fire danger, which was addressed in the main article and in the comments, there is also the oxygen toxicity to consider. At the pressures used in the test, acute oxygen toxicity would manifest itself after a few hours exposure. More insidious sub-acute effects (including lung and kidney damage) can occur even earlier.

    For a crew operating dangerous machinery in a cramped space, an oxygen seisure is very likely to be catastrophic.

    See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity, which has a pretty good overview.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

    ... which also holds the dubious distinction of most astronauts killed per astronaut flown.

    As both the Challenger a Columbia disaster investigations have shown, this is not an accident: NASA leadership has a nasty habit of normalizing the abnormal behaviour and abnormal events, which their own initial engineering assessement tells them are dangerous. This was the case for Apollo (we got away with pure oxygen before, so let's do it once more), Challenger (we did launch in the cold before, and the O-ring erosion did not bite us, so let's do it again), and Columbia (we were hit with the foam a few times before and survived, so it is OK).

    These are not the hallmarks of the most careful and risk-averse organization.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

      Have we got full Soviet data?

      And, N1 rocket.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

        It's not just the Soviets/Russians.

        The Chinese space program also has a lower fatality rate - although of course the sample size is so small that this comparison is not statistically meaningful.

        The issue here is that simply claiming to be the best at something, without actually being the best, is not going to get you very far in the real world.

        The signs are that NASA has at least learned some of the past lessons, and is planning for failures and accidents to occur in their next crewed capsule, instead of hoping to magically engineer them away. The Orion LAS system is a good example - STS was an aberration among manned space programs with prayer being the only realistic emergency option early in the launch.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

          The issue here is that simply claiming to be the best at something, without actually being the best, is not going to get you very far in the real world.

          Anon, I have to tell you something....

        2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

          Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

          The Chinese almost certainly don't have a lower fatality rate than NASA. They blew up a village in the 90s, with a launch that went out of control. They just covered it up.

          NASA have more fatalities in flight. Although nobody else has launched more than 3 people at a time. So as you can expect no survivors in most rocket accidents, you're better counting accidents per flight.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

            So as you can expect no survivors in most rocket accidents...

            Many rocket accidents are survivable, provided that you recognize that mishaps are inevitable in the long run, and prepare for them. A case in point is Soyuz T-10a flight, where the crew survived launchpad fire and rocket explosion.

          2. Faux Science Slayer

            risk-averse space might mean fake Moon landings

            WikiLeaks has whistleblower has documents of faked Moon photos....

            China say no evidence of Rover left behind....Dr James Fetzer has more info....

      2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

        Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

        The N1 blew up three times, killing nobody. It killed nobody because they were sensibly doing unmanned test launches. NASA put the Saturn V into human-carrying service despite unresolved and potentially lethal issues in unmanned testing, for political reasons.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

          "The N1 blew up three times, killing nobody"

          True, apart from the ground explosion that killed the designer and large number of soviet engineers.

          The Brazilians failed to learn from that and killed half their entire space program staff in one go.

          1. cray74

            Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

            "The N1 blew up three times, killing nobody"

            True, apart from the ground explosion that killed the designer and large number of soviet engineers.

            The Nedelin Catastrophe involved an R-16 over 8 years before an N-1 reached the launch pad.

            The four flights of the N-1 killed no one, not even the second flight that flattened the launch pad and rates as one of the largest man-made, non-nuclear explosions in history. Several laundry workers suffered from exhaustion when scraping out all the undies of N-1 ground crew, who had to huddle in bunkers for 30 minutes after the explosion, but no one died.

        2. cray74

          Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

          The N1 blew up three times, killing nobody.

          Nitpick: 4 times.

          It killed nobody because

          Correct.

          they were sensibly doing unmanned test launches.

          There was little sensible about the Russian N1 test program because the Russians skipped a lot of basic tests under limited budget, limited time, and enormous political pressure. The N-1 flights were analogous to jumping to Apollo 4 without doing Little Joe II, Saturn I, Saturn IB test flights, and skipping dynamic ground test modules. Details below.

          NASA put the Saturn V into human-carrying service despite unresolved and potentially lethal issues in unmanned testing, for political reasons.

          The N1 had vastly less testing than the Saturn V in every way.

          1) Only one of every three N1 first stage engines were factory-tested before they were launched. Every Saturn V engine, F-1 to J-2 to RCS cluster, was test-fired before it was installed in a stage. Several N-1 flights were destroyed by engine or plumbing problems that would've been identified in individual engine testing.

          2) None of the N1 stages were test-fired on the ground, either in the R&D phase of the N1 program or in pre-flight stage check-outs. In addition to dynamic test modules that the N-1 lacked, every Saturn V stage was test-fired (see figure 231) before it went to the launch pad.

          3) The N-1 never had test flights of individual stages on supporting rockets. The Saturn V in the Apollo configuration had numerous test flights of individual stages including:

          a) 4 Little Joe II flights (AS-001 to AS-002) to evaluate Apollo escape system

          b) 5 Saturn I flights testing the Apollo CSM stack (flights AS-101 to AS-105); also evaluated the Saturn IV stage

          c) 6 Saturn Ib flights testing the Apollo CSM, Apollo LEM, and first manned Apollo flights (AS-201 to AS-203; Apollo 1, Apollo 5; Apollo 7). Apollo 1, of course, killed three astronauts on the pad.

          d) 5 Saturn V test flights, including the unmanned Apollo 4 and manned Apollo 6, 8, 9, and 10.

          The Russian approach to the N-1 was, "The rocket's on the pad? Hold my vodka and watch this." Due to lack of budget and logistics issues (each first stage had to be disassembled at the factory and shipped in pieces to the launch site), they never performed the basic hardware testing that the Americans did from 1960 to 1967.

          For example, the F-1 engine had been in testing for 5 years before the Russians even got the N-1 budget approved. Yet, the first N-1 launch was just before Apollo 9.

          As a result, this is how the four N-1 launches played out:

          1) Flight 1: though the N-1 had never been tested in whole, the Russians decided to use the N-1 to make a lunar flyby with the Soyuz 7K-L1 "Zond" module - basically skipping tests the US performed with Little Joe II, the Saturn I, Saturn IB, and some Saturn V. At T+25 seconds, vibrations start tearing apart rocket plumbing and started a fire in the engine bay. The flight control system ("Kord") responded by shutting down all engines at T+68. Kord also locked the second and third stages, preventing ground control from separating those and salvaging some upper stage test data. Problem: crappy construction. Solution: launch another rocket, this time with fire extinguishers on each engine.

          2) Flight 2: Not 5 months later with no interim testing and an incomplete investigation of launch 1, the Russians tried again. Another Zond capsule would flyby the moon looking for landing sites. After engine start but before launch pad release, engine #8 blew up (debris was found on the pad). Kord methodically began shutting down damaged nearby engines from T+10 to T+12 as the rocket gained altitude, then decided "let's shut all the engines down!" Except Kord failed at that, too, and left #18 burning. The unbalanced thrust tilted the N-1, which then blew up close to the launch pad in one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history. The upper stage escape system worked perfectly, though. The root cause: bad welds shed metal into the operating engine. Solution: add filters to the fuel lines and reprogram Kord not to shut down engines in the first 50 seconds of flight.

          3) Flight 3: 2 years later with only a dummy payload, the Russians discovered something that the US would've found in wind tunnel testing or individual stage test flights: the complicated aerodynamics of the semi-plug nozzle design of the N-1 first stage created weird eddies and counter-currents that induced an uncontrollable roll. In light of launches 1 and 2, Kord was now banned from shutting down engines in the first 50 seconds of flight to protect the launch pad. So, the third N-1 went through an accelerating roll until the third stage tore off and Kord was finally able to shut down first stage engines. Solution: extensively analyze the first stage aerodynamics, redesign the tail section, and...just kidding. The Russians added powerful roll-control rocket engines to the first stage.

          4) Flight 4: 16 months later with a Zond payload, the Rooskies tried again. Because the Russians had never done individual stage ground testing, individual stage test flights, or operated an N-1 longer than 68 seconds, they had little knowledge of problems in the first stage engine plumbing. An attempt to reduce loads during the well-understood Max-Q period by shutting down 6 first stage engines led to the less-understood problem of water hammer blowing apart the fuel lines. The launch escape system worked again, and the upper stages separated from the disintegrating first stage correctly.

          The N-1s were flown as all-up unmanned launches similar to Apollo 4. Those N-1 flights were wrecked by issues that the US a) avoided through quality control (e.g., good welding), or b) identified in ground testing, or c) on unmanned test flights that actually flew as planned. Apollo 4 and 7 did identify plumbing problems like pogo oscillations that were still problematic as late as Apollo 13.

          By aerospace industry standards, the Saturn V and shuttle had very abbreviated flight testing before they were pushed into service. The crews of Apollo 1 and Challenger died because NASA got complacent. But to say the non-existent testing of the N-1 was "sensible" is not correct since it was even more abbreviated, budget-starved, and rushed than NASA's test plans.

    2. Fred Dibnah

      Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

      Hear hear. Richard Feynman's observations on the Challenger failure are well worth a read. He cut through the hubris and complacency of NASA management to get to the heart of the matter.

      1. John H Woods Silver badge

        Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

        "Richard Feynman's observations on the Challenger failure are well worth a read" -- Fred Dibnah

        As are Edward Tufte's speculations on the role of PowerPoint in the Columbia disaster

      2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Stop

        Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

        > hubris and complacency of NASA management

        But this is completely wrong. I also fail to see why a physics genius was suddenly expert in management practices and sociology (insert random comment on Trump here). A far better account is http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo22781921.html

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

          @Destroy All Monsters

          You speak as if management is difficult, and that sociology is even a Thing.

          Sociology, never was, is not and never will be a science, much as its' practitioners may wish it. It is, to use the technical term, well intentioned bollocks. Wake me up when it produces the equations to accurately predict absolutely anything.

          As for management, bad people make anything they do look difficult. In over 40 years in the aerospace technology business I've only come across 3 managers who could make stuff happen, seemingly out of thin air sometimes, and still be admired by all above - and, more importantly - below them, because they were simply very good at the job. Amusingly, all 3 were ex military, one was ex SF, and all agreed you couldn't meet nicer people.

          So when someone as smart as Richard Feynman comes along, well, he speaks as he finds, and what he finds could mostly be deduced by a five year old. And remember he was one of the world's smartest people. Just because management seems hard to you, it doesn't mean it's hard for him! Or that it's hard at all.

          After all, do you need a Harvard MBA to draw the right conclusion from the following? [Paraphrased]

          'It's cold. The O rings don't operate when it's cold... If you launch you'll kill 7 people.'

          'We are not scientists. We need to launch. We'll lean on you until you give the go ahead.'

          They launched. They killed 7 people.

          A 5 year old could have deduced the correct thing to do.

          The problem is that it had nothing whatsoever to do with management. The management at Morton Thiokol were spineless and allowed a political decision to be taken.

          Hopefully, at least that can't happen anymore.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

            You speak as if management is difficult, and that sociology is even a Thing.

            The truth is that effective management is extremely difficult. I meet amazingly smart people every day - many of them excellent scientists and engineers, and quite a few of them in management positions and doing a competent job of work out of it. However, in my entire life I've encountered only a handful of truly outstanding and effective managers, who can make groups of people come together and earn to succeed. Such people are worth their weight in gold, and then some - precisely because they possess something beyond just the intelligence or technical competdnce - which, frankly, are not that rare.

            And yes, sociology is extremely useful in understanding group dynamics which might lead to wrong decisions precipitating a catastrophe. The tragic trugh is that most of the time, nobody sets to callously murder an astronaut or a car driver or a patient in the name of Mammon. The decisions leading to the disaster are taken by intelligent, well-meaning people trying to do their best. And by dismissing the efforts to understand how and why this occurs as "not a thing", you only make sure that these situations will reoccur.

        2. Joe Gurman

          Re: The agency is recognized the world over as the most careful and risk-averse space agency.

          Where does this comment come from? From what thought processes?

          Feynman was speaking as a scientist and only as a scientist, when he wrote that, "Nature cannot be fooled."

          His only foray into management science was asking Marshall propulsion managers and engineers, separately, to write secretly on a slip of paper how many missions they believed, on average, it would be before a catastrophic failure of the shuttle because of issues with the main engines (not the solids). To a man (and they all were), the engineers wrote numbers between 10 and 100 the managers, including some who had been working as engineers as recently as a few weeks before, to a man, wrote the NASA party line number, 10,000. You didn't need to be an expert on anything other than self-delusion to see what was going on.

          The Challenger and Columbia screwups (calling them "accidents" is dignifying poor engineering management without justification) were the result of the same kind of management-ignores-high-risk issues behavior as caused the loss of Apollo 1.

  9. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Is pure oxygen necessarily wrong?

    The capsule design was to use pure O2 at 3psi to give roughly the partial pressure of O2 in normal air while reducing the mechanical pressure on the hull.

    The mistake was doing an overpressure test by adding oxygen rather than N2 or He, a mistake that any scuba diver would have spotted.

    But it doesn't mean that using regular atmosphere mix is the best. It means we have to ship lots of useless N2 to the ISS, it means shuttle astronauts had to purge with pure oxygen in case they got decompression sickness in a high altitude escape (as if) and you have to make the structure good to 15psi rather than 3

    Are the physiological advantages of living at near 15psi important?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      15psi is only needed to offset external pressure

      As you note 3psi works ok for the spam in the can - the problem is simply that the capsule would have to be made much stronger to support -12psi at sea level (especially during launch with additional wind pressure). And strength means weight, so instead NASA adopted to a mixed O2/N2 atmosphere at 15psi, bleeding down to O2 as the pressure fell during ascent to orbit. This adds some complexity and a little weight but less than for other solutions.

      1. wolfetone Silver badge

        Re: 15psi is only needed to offset external pressure

        If the capsule door was able to open outward instead of inward they'd have stood a better chance in my opinion.

        1. graeme leggett Silver badge

          Re: 15psi is only needed to offset external pressure

          The door opening direction was due to other concerns. If the Apollo capsule had sunk upon splashdown the crew would not have been able to get out.

          The "Liberty Bell" Mercury capsule had sank when the door jettisoned. The astronaut on that occasion was Grissom.

          1. wolfetone Silver badge

            Re: 15psi is only needed to offset external pressure

            But if you read the testimonies of the people around the crew hatch, both the astronauts and those outside tried to open the door. They couldn't, because the pressure inside the CM was pushing the door in to the hole. They revised this for the later missions where the door opened outwards.

            It doesn't matter what the other concerns were for the choice of door opening direction. The fact is they didn't think they may need to open the door quickly in an emergency.

  10. i1ya

    Maybe offtopic, maybe not...

    Not so long ago I learned about Nedelin catastrophe - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe - launchpad accident in USSR that had ~78 killed, 120 injured

  11. staggers

    Important nitpick

    Er, why is it important? This is a sombre thing, which I remember well. I was a teenager then, and very shocked, at a time when this was huge news. We all knew what was meant in this article.

    Just like General Groves berating people far more brilliant than himself for missing zeroes on a blackboard, the intended recipients knew what was meant.

    And now we know you do, too. Ask yourself this; if the press said it more correctly what would be different now?

    Nothing, except your nitpick. And surely here of all places it wasn't needed.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Important nitpick

    Er, why is it important? This is a sombre thing, which I remember well. I was a teenager then, and very shocked, at a time when this was huge news. We all knew what was meant in this article.

    Just like General Groves berating people far more brilliant than himself for missing zeroes on a blackboard, the intended recipients knew what was meant.

    And now we know you do, too. Ask yourself this; if the press said it more correctly what would be different now?

    Nothing, except your nitpick. And surely here of all places it wasn't needed.

  13. TimNevins

    I wonder if Scott Grissom was invited

    I think his father did not want to go ahead with the sham.

    http://www.seeker.com/the-apollo-1-conspiracy-theory-1766444880.html

    "In 1999. Scott Grissom, Gus' then 48 year old son, came forward saying his father had been murdered.

    The younger Grissom had his suspicions in the 1960s but wasn't able to prove foul play until the 1990s when he was granted access to the charred Apollo 1 capsule.

    Rooting around the instrumentation, he found a “fabricated metal plate" behind a switch on one of the instrument panels that controlled the source of the capsule's electrical power.

    Its placement behind that switch, he said, was clearly an act of sabotage.

    It ensured that when any crew member toggled that switch there would be a spark.

    That spark would have been enough to start the fire that killed the crew."

    1. Tikimon
      Unhappy

      Re: I wonder if Scott Grissom was invited

      Bereaved relatives are hardly the best information source to establish a conspiracy. The ones left behind often turn to Denial in the face of established facts. The truth can be hard to face or unsatisfying, so people cling to unsupported beliefs instead.

      This is anecdotal and merely to illustrate. I recall a program on TV about the search for a Vietnam War air crash site. They finally found the site in the deep jungle. Among the pulverized bits of wreckage (it hit the ground hard) they found the pilot's dog tags and enough teeth to ID him from dental records. But his widow still refuses to believe that he's dead.

  14. jelabarre59

    Held a piece myself

    Back 50 years ago my father had worked for an aerospace company, as a troubleshooter and field service rep, and the company provided instrumentation for NASA. I remember one day after he came back from a business trip I was holding some burned gauges he had at the house. Thick-headed kid I was, I never connected the gauges to the Apollo1 fire. Wasn't until years later when my mother mentioned she wanted them *out* of the house because they were creeping her out.

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