When I was a boy in the 1960's astronauts were my heroes. This was a horrible tragedy for these men, their families, and the history of space exploration.
The Apollo One Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
When I was a boy in the 1960's astronauts were my heroes. This was a horrible tragedy for these men, their families, and the history of space exploration.
The Apollo One Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
They were part of a profession that at the time had a high mortality rate but I can't imagine any of them thought they'd go that way on the pad during a run of the mill test. That must've been a ver tough time for everyone involved.
It's been a while since I've watched the HBO miniseries "From the earth to the moon", it was done at the same time as Apollo 13 and by the same team. It's excellent and I'll be watching it again. The second episode is focused on this tragedy.
I can't remember why they filled the capsule with pure oxygen instead of just air.
adam525i said:They were part of a profession that at the time had a high mortality rate but I can't imagine any of them thought they'd go that way on the pad during a run of the mill test. That must've been a ver tough time for everyone involved.
It's been a while since I've watched the HBO miniseries "From the earth to the moon", it was done at the same time as Apollo 13 and by the same team. It's excellent and I'll be watching it again. The second episode is focused on this tragedy.
The astronaut mortality rate - as astronauts - was pretty low at the time. It wasn't until the shuttle that it became a problem. They did have a problem with crashing airplanes, and of course many of them came from the ranks of test pilots where high mortality was the way things went. But in the astonaut corps, you were pretty safe unless you were zooming around in your own pet jet airplane.
The pure oxygen environment was there so they could run lower pressure in the capsule. Most of air is nitrogen which we really don't need in the short term. So you run 100% oxygen at a low pressure and now you don't need as much structure in your spacecraft. I think they also had the internal pressure during the Apollo 1 test jacked up to check for leaks because of course the capsule was surrounded by 15 psi of pressure, so you need at least that much to make a leak happen. At that point, they probably should have used normal atmosphere but instead they just pumped in more O2 because that's how the thing was supposed to fly.
There were also problems with things like lots of velcro inside, which increased the flammability even more.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Thanks for that.
The book The Right Stuff spends a lot of time on test pilots and the immense risks involved with experimental aircraft.
Something like a 25% mortality rate in the 1950's.
The astronauts came out of that background so were seriously aware of the suddenness of catastrophic failure. After watching that old video about Apollo 1 the safety culture slippage that "allowed" them to hand wave away the potential failure modes it sounded a lot like the lead up to the 1986 Challenger diaster.
VolvoHeretic said:I can't remember why they filled the capsule with pure oxygen instead of just air.
Speaking hypothetically, if air is 20% oxygen, then having the capsule running pure oxygen would allow/require them to pressurize to only 3psi, so the thing can be lighter.
Sorry, I should've been more clear that all these guys came from backgrounds as test pilots/combat pilots and that was what I was referring to.
Let's not forget their names.
Commander Virgil 'Gus' Grissom, America's second man in space, was joined on Apollo 1 by Senior Pilot Ed White, the nation's first spacewalker. Rounding out the Apollo 1 crew was Pilot Roger Chaffee, an energetic rookie.
I saw that a veterinary client in my office was named Grissom. When commented on his name and referred to Gus Grissom, he said that Grissom was his uncle, but died before he was born.
I said, "Shake my hand." When he did, I told him that I had shaken his uncle's hand when I was six. I don't know if it made a connection for him, but it seemed appropriate.
jharry3 said:it sounded a lot like the lead up to the 1986 Challenger diaster.
The anniversary of that is tomorrow, 1/28/86.
jharry3 said:When I was a boy in the 1960's astronauts were my heroes. This was a horrible tragedy for these men, their families, and the history of space exploration.
The Apollo One Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
Me too, I was all about the space race when I was a boy. As an adult I spent some years as a NASA subcontractor, and had the honor of working with a man who was the lead engineer at NASA Langley and also was on the review board for the Apollo 1 disaster. He had some stories.
The final Apollo 1 report is available online, if you're interested: https://www.nasa.gov/history/Apollo204/content.html
Steve_Jones said:jharry3 said:it sounded a lot like the lead up to the 1986 Challenger diaster.
The anniversary of that is tomorrow, 1/28/86.
And the Columbia one is Saturday, Feb 1. This is not a particular happy time of year for NASA.
Steve_Jones said:jharry3 said:it sounded a lot like the lead up to the 1986 Challenger diaster.
The anniversary of that is tomorrow, 1/28/86.
I watched that. I loved all thing aviation, and the orbiter had wings, so that's a plane to 6 year old me, one day shy of my 7th birthday. I didn't have to listen to the tv. I knew what I saw, and the 7 astronauts died before my eyes.
Astronauts at that time were brave souls. Sure, theory said this should be relatively safe, but reality always throws curveballs. RIP to these three pioneers.
That was my 11th birthday. We had just finished blowing out the candles. The TV was on in the den with the sound down. Someone saw the "Special Report" graphic flash across the screen. That's when "Special Report" was saved only for important stories like presidents being assassinated or Stalin's daughter defecting. Anyway, my father turned the sound up and we watched the story unfold. Grissom was the second American in space. He also flew the first Gemini mission. Ed White was the first American to leave the spacecraft on a spacewalk. This was to be Roger Chaffee's first flight. Needless to say, my 11th birthday party was over before the cake was served.
So Jerry is 01/27 and Appleseed is 01/29.
Challenger was on my 16th birthday, so hapy birthday guys :)
Here is a good shot of them. One wonders what things they could have done.
We are only now just starting to loose the Apollo and earlier astronauts.
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