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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.
The reason the hatches took no less than 90 seconds to open is because NASA wanted to prevent another Liberty Bell 7 incident (MR-4) where the hatch supposedly blew off prematurely. Poor Gus Grissom was apparently not intended to make it out of the space program alive.
I am a meat popsicle.
Every astronaut that has ever been KIA has had buerocratic imcompetence to blame. There have been two NASA tragedies: Apollo 1 and challenger. In the case of Apollo 1, NASA was too lazy to use a proper atmosphere: "The committee can only conclude that NASA's long history of successes in testing and launching space vehicles with pure oxygen environments at 16.7 p.s.i. and lower pressures led to overconfidence and complacency.". In challenger, the O-ring manager knew very well that they were likely to rupture and demanded that the launch be scrubbed, but was overruled by his ignorant superiors. It seems to me that astronauts are alot more likely to be killed as a result of someone else's incompetence than their own. They certainly deserve the accolade of bravery since trusting others takes alot more of it than trusting yourself.
I used to work for the company that made some or all (don't know which) of the wire in the Apollo module. At one point, it was suggested that our wire caused the fire: the insulation was said to flow under pressure, thus becoming thin and allowing for a spark. All that was required was that the wire be stretched across a hard, rather sharp edge. Our company lived in dread of bad publicity, and we talked of the charges in hushed tones only. There was a very unpleaeant feeling associated with any mention of the topic...not because people died, but because the bigwigs were afraid of being blamed. Some insulation flows under pressure, some does not. Wrong insulation for that wire? If so, who chose the insulation? There is a strong tendency both to place blame on someone and to do all you can to cover your behind.....that sort of "It was not my fault, he did it" attitude was the company's motto. I hated working there.
I still have an empty spot on my heart, both for the crew of Apollo 1 and the Challenger. My father worked for NASA during the space race up until 10 years ago. I was neat getting the 8x10 publicity pictures for reports, the walls, etc.
... but think about it.
Even though I'm an old poop now, I still keep a few hanging, and one wall, is the crew of the Apollo 1 to remind me not to take things for granted.
Yeah, I know, I sound like a big wuss
In spite of this tragedy, we still managed to put a man on the moon with little more than vaccum tubes and slide rules !
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Actually, you're wrong. The consensus view is that they died of suffocation, not bruning to death. Yes, they were in a fire, but they were also in space suits designed to protect them from the extreme heat of the sun in space (it gets a hell of a lot hotter out there than it does here, thanks to our atmosphere.
It wasn't just a design fault. It WAS, as you mention, a ridiculous test to put such a high concentration of O2 in the capsule. Much higher than it would ever receive in-flight.
Still it was part of the price paid to advance the space program. As the saying goes, and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but to make an omelette, you have to break a few eggs. Going into space is/was, and probably always will be, to some degree, a dangerous endeavor. Just as going into submarine is inherently dangerous.
In the case of a submarine the danger is always implosion. In the case of space, it's explosion. Space is also inherently more dangerous because of the types of fuels involved and the lower degree for margin of error.
Anyway, the only design flaw, in regards to your post, was an overuse of velcro, which happens to be quite flammable, especially in a high oxygen atmostphere. The other flaw (the O2) level, wasn't a design flaw, it was a "execution" (for lack of having the proper vocabulary on hand) flaw.
I think there were two issues that led to the disaster of Apollo 1:
1. There was WAY too much exposed combustible material inside the capsule. Even if the atmosphere inside the capsule during the test sported a gas mix similar to regular air if a fire broke out it would have been extremely difficult to douse the fire.
2. The fact the atmosphere was close to pure oxygen meant that if a fire broke out it would have burned with extreme ferocity.
That was why by the time Apollo 7 flew in October 1968 the entire capsule owed almost nothing to the original capsule design--all the combustible material were replaced by fire-retardant equivalents and the gas mixture on the launch pad was equivalent to air, which slowly changed to pure oxygen by the time the Apollo CSM was in orbit.
What was not known to the Americans was in the early 1960's during a series of tests to develop Soviet manned space vehicles a fire broke out in a test space capsule design with a cosmonaut in it when it was filled with pure O2--the cosmonaut burned to death.
what many of you that are commenting on are failing to realize is that you are using your perspective of "today" and not from that time. My dad was part of the apollo project and specifically was part of the accident and redesign team that focused on all aspects of the electrical system. I had the fortune to visit the launch pads and facilites in florida where he worked shortly before he passed away. The hatch may have prevented them from getting out, but fire in the capsule was not considered a possibility at that time. It was an engineering choice. After the accident they went through the entire design, testing, production phases and made significant changes on everything. the cause was a short in the oxygen panel in a rarified oxygen atmosphere. It was a flashfire that they could not have escaped even if they could have My dad was very proud to have helped to redesign the entire electrical system, but he also pointed out that they (engineers) took the time to go through every system on the entire craft. All the engineers took the acident personally and went out their way contribute to the improvements. It was a time of unknowns and great challenges and shows the quality of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
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.
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