In spring 1961, new President John F. Kennedy announced that America was going to send a man to the moon and then get him back to earth without killing him. Some of his election campaign had consisted of promising that the USA would boss the USSR in the space race, that America would be not ‘first but, first and, first if, but first period.’ This is pretty bold for a man who didn’t really understand any of the technology involved, and was so terrified of the astronomical (lols) money involved in even attempting it ($345 billion give or take in today’s money) that he had just deferred a budget increase for NASA.
So why would you say something so outlandish, so risky in terms of failing so publicly? The answer is, that on 12th April, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first human to ever leave earth and return in one piece. When Kennedy asked why they had been beaten into space and what America’s chances of catching up were, he was told ‘we are neither making maximum effort nor achieving results necessary if this country is to reach a position of leadership.’
Ouch.
On 25th May 1961, came that ‘Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs’ from JFK,
‘Now it is time to take longer strides—time for a great new American enterprise—time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth... I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.’
This was pretty bonkers when you consider that the moon was some 250,000 miles from earth. It would take nigh on a week to fly there, touch ground and get back, and at this point the longest stint a man in space had managed was less than two hours and consisted of circling the earth once. Worse, that man was a Russian. So far, the only American that had been into into space, Alan Shepard, had undertaken a flight that was 15 minutes long.
NASA had named their manned space flight programme Apollo after the Greek god who rode a chariot across the heavens. After Kennedy’s speech, as opposed to the general objective of developing an advanced crewed spacecraft, it now got lumbered with his absurd moon claims, and became all about putting a man on it.
There’s a whole lot of tetchy stuff involved in how they intended to get there, and what method they wanted to use that I don’t understand, but in short, for the purposes of our story, we’re interested in the testing and development of the Apollo command and service module, (CSM) a cone-shaped capsule that was to stay orbiting the moon with one astronaut in it whilst the other two went down to the surface in a lunar module and then returned for the flight home. It’s the part of the spacecraft that goes to sh*t in Apollo 13 and tries to kill Tom Hanks.
NASA’s John Houbolt pointing at some stuff. It’s a breakdown of Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, which is the plan they eventually chose. (NASA)
CSM-012 was built by North American Aviation, who had built the P-51 Mustang fighter during WW2 and beyond. The CSM was an advancement on very early designs and was only intended to be used in low Earth orbit test flights, before NASA moved on to another ‘block’ of them that would be capable of the trip to the moon. Number 12, the Apollo 1 CSM, was one of only two that was intended to carry astronauts.
This ironic photo was presented by the Apollo 1 astronauts (L-R Edward White, Virgil ‘Gil’ Grissom and Roger Chaffee) to management on 19th August after they had expressed concerns about the amount of flammable stuff in the cabin. It was mainly nylon and velcro netting for holding things in place. They captioned it: ‘It isn't that we don't trust you, Joe, but this time we've decided to go over your head.’ (NASA)
The CSM arrived at Kennedy Space Centre a week after the photo was presented and intensive testing and amendments were carried out. The mission known as Apollo 1 was due to take place in the third week of February, 1967, and in the run up, there was to be a launch simulation on 27th January. It was a ‘plugs out’ test, which means that they wanted to know id the craft would work on simulated internal power if they took all of the cables and umbilicals out. It was not considered to be dangerous, and anything pyrotechnic had been disabled.
At 1:00pm the three astronauts climbed into the CSM in their suits, and were strapped in and hooked up to their breathing and communications systems. There was then a delay, because Gil Grissom could smell something off. He said it smelled like ‘sour buttermilk’ and so samples of the air were taken, but nothing untoward was found and an investigation said it had nothing to do with what followed. The three hatches were sealed, and the air in the cabin was replaced with pure oxygen.
Chaffee, Grissom and White in their simulator a few weeks before their deaths.
The three astronauts had been inside the CSM for several hours whilst they went about troubleshooting. As they waited for the simulated countdown, Grissom, Chaffee and White were running through their checklist again when one of them, (thought to be Grissom) was heard saying: ‘Hey! Fire!” Or “Flame” The broadcast then featured a garbled transmission, believed to have been made by Chaffee, talking about a bad fire. It lasted about five seconds and ended with the sound of someone in pain.
In the five minutes it took to get the three hatches open, the men inside were caught in a rapidly spreading inferno, fuelled by pure oxygen. The scene inside was harrowing. Grissom’s body was on the floor, not in his restraints. The fire had burned through White’s restraints. He was lying near the hatch, and both of their spacesuits had partly melted. White had tried to open the inner hatch, whilst Chaffee had followed procedure, staying strapped in and at the comms whilst he waited for the hatch to open. The amount of melted nylon had fused the three astronauts to the interior of the cabin, and it took well over an hour to remove their bodies, and had to take place several hours later whilst medical personnel waited for the poisonous atmosphere to clear.
Original Caption: ‘These four photographs, in the final report of the Apollo 204 Review Board, show fire damage section of the spacecraft 012 Command Module interior. As each component was removed from the spacecraft for inspection during the investigation, photographs were taken. This step by step photography was used throughout the disassembly of more than 1,000 components. Approximately 5,000 photographs were taken during the ten week investigation.
TOP LEFT shows the lower left hand section of the forward lower equipment bay.
TOP RIGHT is the upper left hand forward equipment bay above the Control Unit.
BOTTOM LEFT shows a section of the left front corner of the Command Module floor.
BOTTOM RIGHT a view of the area of the Environmental Control Unit in the lower left hand equipment bay of the command module.’ (All photos NARA)
The cause of death for all three astronauts was given as cardiac arrest brought on by carbon monoxide. Mercifully, I suppose, the burns were said to have occurred after death. As soon as the fire melted portions of their spacesuits and the tubes suppling them with oxygen began to melt, they suffered asphyxiation. A thorough investigation listed the causes of the tragedy as:
An ignition source attributed to “vulnerable” wiring and plumbing
The pure oxygen atmosphere at higher than atmospheric pressure
The time it took to try and open the cabin because of pressure on the inner hatch
Combustible materials in the cabin
Inadequate emergency measures in place (across rescue, medical assistance and escape)
An avoidable tragedy?
Fast forward to 1986, some information came to light that threw up a ‘what if’ scenario. Is it possible, that the Soviets had information that might have prevented the fate of Apollo 1, and additionally, that the same information had been in the possession of the CIA?
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