On this date,
Originally planned for a Feb 24 the launch.

A training exercise took three brave men.

I recently read "First on the Moon," written in 1970. They (like all Project Apollo books) spent a good deal talking about the Apollo 1 fire.

There were a couple interesting passages. In one, Gus Grissom stated that people will die in space flight, and the public must come to expect and accept it (we could have used this perspective after we lost the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia). Grissom was an amazing man, and had he not died in the fire, the consensus was that he would have been the first man to walk on the moon.

Another one indicated that the Apollo 1 fire actually did us a favor. The pre-fire Apollo spacecraft was a piece of junk. After the fire, there were hundreds (maybe over 1000) changes made, which resulted in an excellent spacecraft (the Apollo 1 spacecraft was an ENTIRELY different vehicle compared to the later variants, such as Apollo 11). Complacency was rampant in the program, and it took the shock of the fire to get NASA and the industry to pull its collective head out of its butt. The book indicated that had the fire not taken place then, it would have eventually happened some other time. Had it happened in space, we probably would have lost at least a couple complete crews. Had it happened on the way to or back from the moon (or while in lunar orbit), we never would have known the cause. The book indicated the first time would have likely been attributed to a micro-meteor strike. Had we launched again after that one, it would have almost certainly happened again on another mission, with the possibility that even then, we may not have been able to figure out the real cause. After the fire, investigators were able to crawl over and through the capsule, and they even seemed to have identified which particular wire caused the spark. Had the capsule been lost in space, of course this could not have happened.

The pure oxygen environment was a hold-over from Projects Mercury and Gemini. Those spacecraft were so small that every single ounce of vehicle and system weight had to be justified. One oxygen tank was a LOT lighter and less complex than two tanks of oxygen and nitrogen (or whatever). Once Apollo came along, we had the available weight budget to go to a 'normal' air environment, but for whatever reason (and "We have always done it this way" was probably a major compelling reason) we didn't see the need to change.

Oxygen is extremely flammable. Pressurized oxygen is even more so (the Apollo 1 capsule was pressurized greater than sea level). Pressurized oxygen basically makes everything burn, and once the inevitable spark happened (they believe a bare wire had its insulation stripped away by people stepping on it repeatedly), there was no way to stop it.

The Soviets had a similar accident. A cosmonaut was in a long-duration simulator (on Earth) in a 100% oxygen environment. A hot-plate used to heat food apparently caused a spark, setting fire to his enclosure and of course killing him. The Sovs kept it a secret, so apparently NASA never knew about it. Perhaps that would have caused them to change to a normal air environment for Apollo. Of course, then, hundreds of other changes likely would not have been made, so in the end, Apollo 1 was a tragedy for the three families (Grissom, White, Chaffee), but ultimately made the lunar program successful due to the urgency to fix all the problems and really produce high-quality spacecraft.

quote:

Oxygen is extremely flammable.

Oxygen is an oxidizer, it is not flammable, but supports combustion of flammable material, to the degree that in normal earth atmosphere, 21% being oxygen, things that normally will not burn or combust, will readily do so in a pure oxygen environment and the combustion is closer to explosive than what most understand as "burning".

Anyone ever utilizing an oxy/ acetylene torch can see what normal lazy orange smokey flame and then the "blowtorch" effect when the 99.5% oxygen is introduced.

The guys experienced pretty much that rapid and intense a fire in seconds.

But those guys did not die in vain, as you stated, they paid with their lives, the "insurance fees" for future QA and focus policies. Sadly such policies are permitted to expire.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:

quote:

Oxygen is extremely flammable.

Oxygen is an oxidizer, it is not flammable, but supports combustion of flammable material, to the degree that in normal earth atmosphere, 21% being oxygen, things that normally will not burn or combust, will readily do so in a pure oxygen environment and the combustion is closer to explosive than what most understand as "burning".

Anyone ever utilizing an oxy/ acetylene torch can see what normal lazy orange smokey flame and then the "blowtorch" effect when the 99.5% oxygen is introduced.

The guys experienced pretty much that rapid and intense a fire in seconds.

But those guys did not die in vain, as you stated, they paid with their lives, the "insurance fees" for future QA and focus policies. Sadly such policies are permitted to expire.

Yep, a lot of people get that one wrong and think that oxygen is flammable, including a few home visit nurses that checked my Father In Law years ago.

NASA engineers were beyond stupid using a 100% oxygen atmosphere. Electrostatic electricity is sufficient to ignite materials in such - even Teflon burns under 100% O2.

The mens’ lives weren’t sacrificed for anything but human stupidity. There’s nothing noble about the incident but we can remember so as to not repeat such, besides honoring those who died.

And don't forget, with the capsule being internally pressurized and the access door opening inward, opening the door was impossible until the pressure neutralized.

the world got quiet , that day , for awhile, I remember