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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.
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.
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
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
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.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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!)
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."