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The Tragedy Of Apollo 1 And The Lessons That Brought Us To The Moon (forbes.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the lessons-learned dept.

An anonymous reader writes: On January 27, 1967, the Apollo 1 crew was performing a "plugs-out" test of the Command/Service Module, an essential simulation of how the three-person capsule would perform under in-space conditions under its own power. At 6:30 PM, a voltage spike occurred, leading to a disaster. In 26 seconds, everything changed. The Apollo 1 fire and the tragic death of all three astronauts wasn't due to just a single point-of-failure, but rather due to five independent confounding factors that if any one of them had been different, the astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee might have survived. As it stands, all the crewed Apollo missions were scrapped for 20 months while NASA changed how they did business. The changes worked remarkably well, and 2.5 years later, humans walked on the Moon.

5 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Forbes again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not going to touch that link even with a mouse attached to a 50 foot pole

    1. Re:Forbes again by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Apparently, StartsWithABang has heard our complaints about his incessant spamming of Forbes links, and responded... by submitting stories as "anonymous reader" instead of attaching his name to his submissions. Hooray for principled stands.

  2. Forbes by Dan+East · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nuff said.

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    1. Re:Forbes by jfultz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know, SlashDot could try to make the world a better place by drawing the line here and taking a public stand. Boycott forbes.com articles until they allow ad blockers. It's an issue of public safety, after all. The fact that Forbes had a high profile incident illustrating why ad blockers are required for safe(r) web browsing makes them all the better of a target. Even better if they boycotted all sites which block ad-blocking viewers, but Forbes can be the public face of what we stand against.

  3. Some things are worth lives... by Jonah+Hex · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are some areas of exploration that are worth the risk of life and limb, space exploration is up there on my own personal list. As in I'd risk myself in order to go into space, even something as "boring" as a return to the moon. Hell I'd even go on a one way trip to Mars, I'm sure my family and friends would be happy to see me off. (ok only a few would)

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