Apollo 1

Last year we looked at the Challenger. This year: Apollo 1. On January 27, 1967, the three-man crew of Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White who were in training for the first Apollo flight were asphixiated in their capsule during a training exercise. The men reported communications glitches prior to the disaster, and it is believed that a spark in their pure-oxygen atmosphere quickly started an unstoppable blaze, consuming the many flammable components in the capsule. There were three hatches between the men and the outside of the capsule, which were not designed to be opened in less than 90 seconds. In addition, it is doubtful that the astronauts could have opened the internal hatch at all since pressure inside the spacecraft rose rapidly after the fire, exceeding the capacity of the pressure-equalization valves. Future designs were modified to remove most of the flammable components from the crew area and include a new quick-opening hatch. NASA has a retrospective.

Comments

a sad day to remember

[marktwain]

While many Slashdot readers will not recall the sad events of 1967, a bit younger than I perhaps, I remember it too well. I was about to finish my undergraduate studies and like many of my generation had an intense interest in the Apollo project. Too many today write off Apollo as a waster of funds and one of little accomplishment. It was anything but that. It was the fulfillment of the dream of President John F. Kennedy, a symbol of mankind's thirst for knowledge. Symbols can be costly and unnecessary, and all too often are, but Apollo was anything but that. Those who died will always be remembered as the trail blazers for those who would one day walk on the moon. And when that happened the whole world tuned in. The peoples of our planet everything that a television set could be found sat glued to the tube with the expansion of the possibilies for the future a much clearer and important vision than being locked in the mud and muck of daily toil. These men died for a reason, a reason in which we who read this thread all have an interest. They sacrified their lives for the sake of the future. I have spent some time, not enough perhaps, browsing the remembrance that NASA has. But it was in part written, I can easily tell, by those who weren't there and done that. You had to be there to share the grief, but you had to, and most did, keep hope alive. I lift my fist in their memory and with my thoughts of their great moment.

Re:a sad day to remember

[Silver222]

I wasn't alive when this happened, but my wife's family was close to it. The picture of the crew on that website is the same one that my brother in law has. His is signed by all three of those astronauts, about a month before they died. My father in law (passed on now), was an engineer at Rockwell during the Apollo missions.

Why is that important? Because it's easy to read history like it doesn't involve real people. My mother in law still gets teary eyed when she hears the names of the Apollo 1 crew. I think today when I go over there, I'm going to look on the wall at the photo of Grissom, White, and Chaffee and thank them. For what? For having the courage to do something I don't think I could have ever done, and for believing in a dream that still is important today.

Re:a sad day to remember

[ddtstudio]

i was a month away from my second birthday when this happened but, as i grew up in the apollo years, it always hung over me as a cautionary, an anchor grounding all the wonder and promise of space exploration in the context of possible human cost. though i had all the apollo patches, a snoopy astronaut doll and all that -- and fully expected to be living on the moon, at least, by now -- i never forgot that anyone involved in the endeavor could end up as the men of apollo fire.

years later, i was standing in a bookstore on newbury street, a sophomore at mit, when i couldn't get the clerk's attention. he told me something had gone wrong with the shuttle and was trying to listen to the radio. i walked across the harvard bridge in the cold to get to the school student center where the nearest tvs i could watch were. and it was as unbelievable as everyone said. we'd scaled back our goals for space flight so radically, yet still there could be a disaster of this magnitude.

i don't have any conclusions from this. would i risk my life for this venture? yes. would i hope it would help us learn something? yes. would i think my life had been wasted? definitely not.

A Tribute to the Pioneers

[JabberWokky]

The Phoenix
by Julia Ecklar

In a tower of flame in capsule twelve
I was there
I know not where they laid my bones
it could be anywhere
but when fire and smoke had faded
a darkness left my sight
and I found my soul in a spaceship's soul (hull?)
Riding home on a trail of light

Chorus:

And my wings are made of tungsten
My flesh of glass and steel
I am the Joy of Terra
for the power that I wield
Once upon a lifetime I died a pioneer
Now I sing within a spaceship's heart...
Does anybody hear?

Before each mornings launch
they know that I am there
To the soul that warms this vessel's hull
they say a silent prayer
I am father ship and spirit
of the dream for which they strive
for I am man (?) at the hands of man
see us rocket for the sky

(Chorus)

My thunder rends the morning skies
Yes, I am here
Though lost to flame when I was man
Now I ride her without fear
For I am more than man now
and man builds me with pride
I lead the way, and I lead the way
of Man's future in the sky

(Chorus)

This song still gives me chills up and down my spine when I listen to it - it is quite possibly the most moving memorial to those who lead the way that I have ever heard.

Ad astra per aspera, Amen.

--
Evan

Re:Incompetence

[s20451]

In the case of Apollo 1, NASA was too lazy to use a proper atmosphere

In addition to being more complex, a two-gas system was shown to be dangerous in itself. In Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Murray and Cox, there is a reference to a case where a test pilot nearly died precisely due to errors made in implementing a two-gas atmosphere. It's easy to sit back and blame incompetent bureaucrats, but more often than not the engineers make design tradeoffs with no completely safe alternatives.

Rocket Men

[xxSOUL_EATERxx]

The film The Right Stuff gives a good feel for what it was like for these early pioneers: half hero, half guinea pig., funny way to be.

These early explorers were in many ways treated like lab animals, yet they soared trough the heavens like living gods: can you imagine what it was like being the first humyn to see the earth from space?

And yet, it is the fate of all pioneers for the trails they first blazed to be trod by myriad lesser souls. As the unspoiled lands explored by Lewis, Clark, and Sacajawea are now criss-crossed by highways, so the ethereal realm of the early astronauts is now a playground for billionaires.

Oh well, on to Mars, I suppose.

The problem isn't always getting up there

[kaladorn]

I forget which Apollo mission it was, but it was one of the ones that made it to land on the moon. The crew were down and they were getting ready to leave and a switch snapped off. Left them in quite a pickle. Of course, their suits bulky gloves couldn't depress it. And without it, they couldn't leave. IIRC, this was solved with one of the super-fancy space pens.

Perhaps some other slashdotter will post the link to the story about this - some sci-fi author (Spider Robinson) wrote about it (in the context of whether it made sense to spend piles of cash developing a pen that could write in space).

It just illustrates the point that space is the most unforgiving environment we're aware of. The Antarctic and the deep sea floor might be close competitors, but space still has them beat. If engineers and astronauts can overcome the kinds of challenges space presents, that is quite an achievement.

We talk about the trickle down from space technologies... and we bitch about the costs of the space program. Quite frankly, it isn't that expensive when you think of the things that have worked there way down to us from that program, that might not have otherwise been developed.

Add to that the fact that one of the major things lacking in our modern world is aspirations and dreams. The dream of getting off the planet to Mars, and then to other systems, should be a powerful draw. It offers us new horizons, new frontiers, a chance to be new pioneers, not just custodians of the remnants of the past. It offers us opportunities to expand our horizons, to learn, and maybe one day to discover other life forms. That has to be the single greatest opportunity I can imagine, and if the dream of going to space doesn't fire your blood, then you're already dead.

Besides, we'd better get some of our populace into some other stable biosphere just in case a big chunk of space debris decides to make a bank shot and knock Earth into the Sun. (With apologies to Dave Lister, cosmic pool player extrordinaire).

Re:The problem isn't always getting up there

[GypC]

I would have to contend that the deep-sea floor is a far more unforgiving environment. We're talking about a pressure differential of thousands of atmospheres as opposed to one. A tiny leak deep-sea can mean instant death. And rescue is no more of a possibility than it is on Mars.

Their deaths saved thousands more - and still do

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Nasa engineers believed that before the fire actually flashed (almost like a flashbulb, with all that exotic metal in a pure O2 atmosphere), the insulation smouldered for a bit. They decided that one way to prevent future accidents of that sort was to detect the smoke the preceededs the fire.

So they commissioned research to do so. And the result was the ionization-type smoke detector. Which you can now buy at any hardware store for as low as ten dollars, and which is required by zoning for virtually all human-habitable houses in the US and many other countries.

These devices have saved many thousands of lives so far, and will continue to do so.

These devices use a small radioactive source to ionize smoke particles, so they don't need to depend on natural ionization and can thus detect extremely miniscule amounts of smoke. This greatly increases their sensitivity, giving much earlier warning. The anti-nuclear hysteria was in full cry at the time. So it's unlikely a private company would have tried to design and market such a device for consumers. But for a NASA project, for short-term use above the atmosphere, it made sense. Once the device was done and its characteristics known, it was easy to show that a tiny amount of short-lived isotope, whose radiation doesn't leak beyond the container during the device's service life, was a miniscule risk compared to the number of lives saved. And a classic NASA spinout occurred.

So the fire and the deaths of the three astronauts was the direct cause of the invention and introduction of practical domestic smoke detectors, which otherwise certainly would not have been introduced for decades, if ever.

The Link

[kaladorn]

The article from Spider thanks to Google cache.

BTW, you'll notice I never mentioned who'd developed it. And the discussion about the merits of these kinds of projects is hardly urban myth, thanks very much. The point is people question whether these kinds of projects are worthwhile. Moreso, admittedly, if it is public money. But even if it is not. (and I never suggested it was!)