Polskie Forum Astronautyczne

Astronautyka => Ziemia - załogowe => Wątek zaczęty przez: adam001d w Lipiec 13, 2010, 18:51

Tytuł: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: adam001d w Lipiec 13, 2010, 18:51

(http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/1825/apollo1patchue6.jpg)
Patch misji

27 styczeń 1967 roku.
Kapsuła Apollo zostaje poddana testom z załogą.
(http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/3247/apollo1tva1.jpg)

O godzinie 18:00 (wszystkie czasy w GMT) do małego pojazdu wchodzi dowódca, mającego odbyć się za miesiąc lotu Apollo 1, Virgil 'Gus' Grissom. Za nim wchodzi Edward White oraz Roger Chaffee.
(http://lk.astronautilus.pl/loty/a1crew.jpg)

Skład załogi rezerwowej:
David Scott, starszy pilot
James McDivitt, dowódca
Russell Schweickart, pilot


(http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2541/ap1s6640760qk1.jpg)
O godzinie 19:42 pojazd zostaje zamknięty, a po trzech minutach zostaje wypełniony atmosferą składającą się w 100% z tlenu. Przez następne trzy godziny załoga boryka się z problemami z systemem komunikacyjnym.

O godzinie 23:21:11 czujniki rejestrują zwiększenie się ciśnienia w kabinie. Rozpoczyna się największa tragedia w historii amerykańskiego programu kosmicznego, która pochłonie życie trzech astronautów.

O godzinie 23:30 mikrofony rejestrują ruch w kabinie, podobne do zarejestrowanych wcześniej podczas testów mikrofonu jednego z astronautów. Dźwięki urywają się po 14 sekundach.

Kilka sekund później rejestruje się zwiększony dopływ tlenu do skafandrów, co wydaje się świadczyć, iż astronauci w pojeździe wykonują jakieś ruchy. Czujniki rejestrują, że przez kilka sekund Ed White wykonuje jakieś czynności wymagające od niego pracy mięśni. Dziewięć sekund później elektrokardiogram White'a rejestruje wzrost aktywności, jednak po pięciu kolejnych sekundach ruch się uspokaja, a wskaźniki wracają do stanu normalnego.

Godzina 23:30:50 - chromatograf gazowy wykazuje pewne wariacje w sygnale. Dziewięć sekund później dźwięki z mikrofonu Grissoma milkną. Jednocześnie czujnik ilości pompowanego tlenu osiąga limit swoich możliwości.

11 sekund później pożar wymyka się spod kontroli.

Godzina 23:31:12 - płomienie ogarniają wnętrze kabiny. Elementy nylonowe topią się prawie natychmiast podsycając płomienie.

Godzina 23:31:14 - załoga raportuje pożar w kabinie.

Godzina 23:31:16 - ciśnienie w kabinie wzrasta do poziomu, którego kapsuła nie jest w stanie wytrzymać. Pożar wydostaje się na zewnątrz.

Godzina 23:31:16.8 - mikrofon wyłapuje krótkie okrzyki astronautów dotyczące pożaru, zakończone okrzykiem bólu.

Godzina 23:31:21 - przekaz z wnętrza pojazdu urywa się. Sekundę później urywa się podgląd z kamer wewnętrznych oraz sygnał telemetrii.

Godzina 23:31:25 - ciśnienie wewnątrz kapsuły spada do poziomu atmosferycznego. Jednocześnie kabina wypełnia się potężnymi ilościami dwutlenku węgla.

Godzina 23:32 - pierwsze urządzenia gaśnicze i personel wysłane do pożaru.

Godzina 23:32:04 - próba otwarcia włazu

Godzina 23:36 - otwarcie włazu
http://lk.astronautilus.pl/loty/a1fire.jpg (Uwaga zdjęcie ukazujące wnętrze spalonego modułu załogowego)

Godzina 23:43 - lekarz na wyrzutni.

Godzina 07:00 - zakończono wydobywanie ciał astronautów.

W trakcie przeprowadzonej później analizy kapsuła zostaje rozmontowana:
(http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/4392/ap1apollo1noidqg1.jpg)

Do czasu katastrofy Challengera była to największa tragedia w historii NASA.
(http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/7825/ap1burnedbx3.jpg)

Katastrofa spowodowana pożarem Apollo 204, odcisnęła ogromny wpływ na cały program załogowych lotów kosmicznych. W przeprojektowanym Apollo całkowicie zrezygnowano z pomysłu atmosfery czysto tlenowej, na rzecz cięższego, ale bezpieczniejszego rozwiązania mieszanki tlenu i azotu. Przeprojektowano wiele układów wewnętrznych w tym właz, który w nowej wersji miał zainstalowane ładunki pirotechniczne i otwierał się na zewnątrz, co umożliwiało jego otwarcie w przypadku zwiększonego ciśnienia w kabinie. Zmieniono przebieg układów elektrycznych i wyposażono kabinę w materiały niepalne. Poprawiono izolację przewodów.

W zasadzie można powiedzieć, że powstał zupełnie nowy wariant kapsuły załogowej.

Jednocześnie przeprojektowano część urządzeń wyrzutni 34. Między innymi dodano spryskiwacze wodne, które miały za zadanie chłodzić wieżyczkę ratunkową przez zapłonem stałych materiałów pędnych.

Raport komisji senackiej zajmującej się wypadkiem - http://klabs.org/richcontent/Reports/Failure_Reports/as-204/senate_956/as204_senate_956.pdf


W tym miesiącu mijają 23 lat od katastrofy

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: mss w Styczeń 28, 2014, 10:08

Wczoraj minęło 47 lat...

(http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb373/Paul_Schermerhorn/Space/apollo1plaqueL_zps6c867784.jpg)

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: mss w Styczeń 26, 2017, 21:32

Jutro mija 50 lat, parę linków z filmami:

https://vimeo.com/107080615

https://vimeo.com/85170670

https://vimeo.com/85170669

https://vimeo.com/85170668

https://vimeo.com/85222396

 :'(

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 27, 2017, 17:36

Apollo’s Worst Day

Veterans of NASA’s moon program referred to it simply as “The Fire.” Did it have to happen?
By Andrew Chaikin Air & Space Magazine 
November 2016

(http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/6d/c9/6dc966f1-c4df-44ad-9311-242c4bd14c35/14k_dj2017_capsuleap1apollo_1_noid_live.jpg__800x600_q85_crop.jpg)
The charred and disassembled Apollo 1 spacecraft, weeks after the accident. (NASA)

No matter how hard I try to forget, I still see the smoke and flames,” wrote former launch pad technician Stephen Clemmons in an essay posted online in 2009. “I can still hear the cries of my teammates as we try to get the hatches open. I can still see the flames reaching up toward the Solid Booster Rocket mounted on top of the spacecraft. I can remember my hopes that the astronauts’ suits would just hold until we could get in.” Clemmons, who died in 2014, spent most of his life haunted by the trauma of having been one of the few eyewitnesses to NASA’s first disaster.

At 6:31 p.m. Eastern time on the evening of January 27, 1967, Clemmons and a handful of colleagues were working 220 feet above ground level at Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 34, just steps away from the Apollo 1 command module, which had been built by the company Clemmons worked for, North American Aviation. Sealed inside, three astronauts—veterans Gus Grissom and Ed White and rookie Roger Chaffee—were slowly making their way through the plugs-out test, a simulated countdown that was one of the many practice runs for the first piloted Apollo mission, a two-week, Earth-orbit flight scheduled for late February. All afternoon the test had been marred by problems, especially with the communications system, but no one had reason to be apprehensive. Because the giant Saturn 1B booster beneath the spacecraft had not been fueled, the exercise wasn’t classified as hazardous.

Suddenly the technicians’ monitors filled with a call of alarm from Grissom: “We’ve got a fire in the cockpit!” Seconds later came a frantic transmission from Chaffee—“We’re burning up!”—that ended with an unintelligible cry. Then, just as suddenly, the line from the spacecraft went dead. Through the craft’s windows the technicians could see an orange glow. At the base of the command module, fire shot out of access panels into the adjoining room. With a loud whoosh and a blast that sent Pad Leader Donald Babbitt reeling, the spacecraft’s hull ruptured, spewing a sheet of flame that charred the papers on Babbitt’s desk. One of the technicians scrambled for the tool they needed to open the craft’s three-piece side hatch, each part of which was secured by a set of latches. To get to it, they raced into the small enclosure called the White Room, which was filled with dense, choking smoke. “You couldn’t see six inches from your face,” one of them later recalled. After only a few seconds they had to retreat, gasping for air, before resuming their desperate efforts to rescue the astronauts. Everyone knew there was a danger that the fire might ignite the spacecraft’s big solid-fuel escape rocket. “If it did, all of us were cooked,” wrote Clemmons.

It took him and his teammates five long minutes to get the hatches off so they could finally look inside. Clemmons would always remember Babbitt, tears streaming down his face, getting on the open communications line to a nearby blockhouse and saying, “I can’t describe what I see.” It was a message to the launch controllers, all of whom had listened helplessly to the sudden and shocking calls from the spacecraft, that the situation was as bad as they feared.

First to enter the spacecraft was fireman Jim Burch, who was met by a dense pall of smoke. “People were hollering for me to get them out and I was confused,” Burch said later. “I couldn’t see anybody; it didn’t seem real. Where were they? I backed off with my light. Then I could see the bodies.” He told Babbitt, “They’re all dead.” It would be hours before the bodies could be removed, not only because of the need for photographers to document everything inside the blackened craft, but because the heat of the fire had fused nylon netting from inside the cabin to the astronauts’ spacesuits.

Throughout NASA, shock gave way to grief. NASA life-support engineer Dick Johnston likened the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew to the loss of a father or brother, and called it “the worst tragedy I’ve ever been through.” Astronaut Deke Slayton, who considered Grissom his best friend among the astronauts, later called that day the “worst I ever had.” Said Flight Director Chris Kraft, “I don’t know how I survived it.”

(http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/dc/b8/dcb813d8-9463-4a60-8fa8-612336a0921d/14i_dj2017_crew742237_live.jpg__800x450_q85_crop_upscale.jpg)
If not for the accident, Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee would likely have gone to the moon. (NASA)

Mixed with their sorrow was another reaction: disbelief. Before each piloted Mercury and Gemini flight, the same test had been carried out, without incident. How could a practice countdown that wasn’t supposed to be hazardous suddenly turn deadly? That was the question NASA’s accident review board tried to answer in the months after the fire, after administrator James Webb persuaded President Lyndon Johnson to let the agency run its own investigation. In a processing facility at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, the command module was subjected to what North American engineer Marty Cioffoletti called “the most excruciating technical dissection of a machine I could ever imagine happening.”

Astronaut Donn Eisele later wrote that inside the charred cockpit “the acrid smell of burned plastic, paint, and nylon was overpowering.” Even more harrowing was the audio tape of the astronauts’ last transmissions, which Eisele and others listened to again and again in an attempt to glean clues. For a while, Eisele wrote, the experience gave him nightmares.

For weeks, as the review board went about its grim task, engineers at NASA and its contractors silently prayed that the fault wouldn’t be with them. “I hate to say that, but you really thanked God it wasn’t your system, that it was somebody else’s, and you could breathe easy again,” Cioffoletti later confessed to writers Charles Murray and Catherine Cox for their book Apollo: The Race to the Moon.

In the end, the board never determined the exact cause—at the fire’s likely starting point, temperatures high enough to melt aluminum had destroyed key evidence—but the investigators did conclude that no one system was responsible. Instead, in terse, dispassionate language, their report called attention to “many deficiencies in design and engineering, manufacture and quality control,” including the command module’s exposed electrical wiring, some of which may have become damaged by repeated opening and closing of a sharp-edged access door during the months before the fire. The hazard was compounded by the difficulty of exiting through the spacecraft’s innermost, inward-opening side hatch, which had trapped the astronauts in their burning craft. Under ideal conditions that hatch took 40 to 70 seconds to open; as it was, the men couldn’t undo the latches before the fire overwhelmed them.

But the biggest culprit, in hindsight, was horrifyingly obvious: At the time of the fire, the command module had been pressurized with pure oxygen at 16.7 pounds per square inch. Studying Apollo 1’s scorched interior, the investigators determined that once the fire began—probably ignited by an electrical arc from damaged wires below and to the left of Grissom’s couch—it propagated with merciless swiftness, spread by nylon nets used for catching dropped objects and by strips of Velcro attached to the cabin walls. Less than 20 seconds after it began, the mounting pressure split the command module’s hull, and with oxygen now escaping, it took only a few more seconds for the fire to exhaust itself. By then Grissom, White, and Chaffee were doomed; they lost consciousness when their suits’ oxygen hoses burned through, and died within minutes—not from their burns, which might have been survivable, but from inhaling carbon monoxide and other toxic gases generated by the fire.

To test this scenario, investigators set up a duplicate of the Apollo 1 cabin inside a boilerplate command module, pressurized it with pure oxygen at 16.7 psi, and triggered an igniter. Astronaut Stu Roosa, who had looked into Apollo 1 an hour after the fire, thought the results of the test “looked exactly like the real spacecraft,” he recalled in 1988. “Everything was the same except the bodies.”

When the review board’s report came out in April 1967, NASA was showered with criticism, including a New York Times editorial entitled “Incompetence and Negligence” that lambasted the agency for putting Grissom, White, and Chaffee “into what even a high school chemistry student would know was a potential oxygen incendiary bomb, one needing only a spark to initiate catastrophe.”

(http://public.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/b1/e1/b1e1ea61-47c5-4d73-8b5d-9c570d1f49b7/14g_dj2017_crewap1-ksc-67pc-17hr_live.jpg)
The crew arrives at the pad on the afternoon of January 27, 1967. This is the last photo taken of them. (NASA)

However, when I talked to Gemini and Apollo astronaut Michael Collins about the fire in 1988, he spoke not of incompetence or negligence but rather a kind of blindness. “Given the sophistication of NASA, given the intelligence of its engineers, given the keen, in-depth analysis that they applied to various problems, it’s just amazing that the most simple, elementary things in the world are what bit them,” he said. “I mean, 16 psi of pure oxygen on the pad, and just not considering that to be a tinderbox. Putting a hatch on with about 28 goddamn [latches], where you couldn’t get it off!… And all of this just, somehow, I don’t know why, we’re blind to them. I mean, it makes us think that the quality of our engineering across the board was juvenile, yet it wasn’t! It was very good engineering.”

Collins was right: The fire’s root cause lay in what cognitive scientists call perceptual blindness, in which even very smart people, sure that they are paying attention, can miss what is right in front of them.

**********

The origins of the Apollo fire go back to 1959, when NASA and McDonnell Aircraft were designing the one-man Mercury capsule. One of the toughest challenges was the environmental control system, which would provide the astronaut with a breathable atmosphere. Experts disagreed on what that atmosphere should contain; some felt it should be an air-like mixture of nitrogen and oxygen at 14.7 psi—ordinary sea-level pressure. But a spacecraft sturdy enough to contain that pressure in the vacuum of space would be too heavy for its Atlas booster. Also, a mixed-gas atmosphere would require precisely regulating the amounts of oxygen and nitrogen, a task beyond the capabilities of available sensors. In the end, designers chose an atmosphere of pure oxygen at a pressure of 5 psi during spaceflight: light, simple, and reliable.

What about on the ground? The plan for practice runs in the spacecraft was to have the astronaut breathe pure oxygen at low pressure through the suit hoses, while the cabin would be pressurized with air as a precaution against fire. But when a McDonnell test pilot passed out during a test run in 1960, engineers realized that because of its greater pressure, cabin air was able to seep undetected into the pilot’s oxygen supply loop, causing nitrogen to build up until the man lost consciousness. There was no way to prevent this, so they decided that during all ground operations, Mercury’s 36-cubic-foot cabin would be pressurized with pure oxygen at 15 psi. McDonnell’s chief spacecraft engineer John Yardley later recalled, “It was a very small capsule, and nobody was really worried about fire there. As a matter of fact, I made some back-of-the-envelope calculations that said it would burn itself out in a few seconds because there just wasn’t that much oxygen in there.”

By mid-1962 Mercury had flown two orbital missions, and NASA had no reason to reconsider its choice. But at North American, engineers designing the Apollo command module knew its cabin would have nearly six times the volume of Mercury’s, so if it were filled with pure oxygen, it would have a correspondingly greater risk of fire. They insisted Apollo have a mixed-gas atmosphere, but NASA rejected the idea for both engineering and  medical reasons. In addition to concerns about a mixed-gas system’s weight and complexity, doctors had warned that in the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, astronauts breathing nitrogen would risk decompression sickness, also known as the bends, a painful and sometimes fatal condition. Reflecting NASA’s carefully weighed decision, Apollo spacecraft program manager Charlie Frick informed North American that the command module would be pressurized with pure oxygen. Frick and his North American counterpart began shouting at each other until Frick finally declared flatly, “You are the contractor. You do as you’re told. Period.”

Based on their own documents, it’s clear that managers at NASA headquarters understood the risks of the decision. Noting that combustion takes place faster, and at higher temperatures, in pure oxygen than in air, they included in their July 1963 Apollo contingency plan the imperative “Fires in the spacecraft must be precluded at all costs.” Chillingly, the plan added, “It has been observed that a number of otherwise nonflammable materials, even human skin, will burst into flame in a pure oxygen atmosphere.”

Reading this, it’s hard to imagine anyone at NASA forgetting about the risk of a spacecraft cabin fire, including Frick’s successor as the Apollo spacecraft program manager, Joe Shea—a brilliant, arrogant engineer who’d come to NASA after leading the development of the guidance system for the U.S. Air Force Titan missile. But as Apollo moved ahead, Shea and everyone else was focused on the possibility of a fire not on the ground but in flight. If that happened, plans called for the astronauts to seal themselves in their spacesuits and depressurize the cabin until the fire was out. That changed in late 1965, as Frank Borman and Jim Lovell readied for their two-week orbital marathon aboard Gemini 7. Knowing they would be the first Americans to remove their suits during a spaceflight, Borman and Lovell thought long and hard about how to fight a cockpit fire. NASA’s best efforts to develop an effective zero-G fire extinguisher had come up short; no one could be sure that, in weightlessness, spraying a fire wouldn’t cause it to spread. They decided their best weapon would be the water gun they used to rehydrate their meals. Fortunately, they never had to find out whether that would have worked.

(http://public.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/7e/27/7e27ea58-d5a5-486f-aefd-64d6b0a4c74c/14o_dj2017_sheaatlorpressconf7-11-62-2_live-wr.jpg)
NASA manager Joe Shea fell into a deep depression after the fire and was replaced as Apollo spacecraft program manager. (NASA)

Look at photos of Gemini 7’s tiny cockpit, however, and you can spot a foreshadowing of the Apollo fire: Strips of Velcro are everywhere. Astronauts had come to rely on the flammable material as a way of securing loose gear in zero-G, and they asked for generous amounts of it as they customized their spacecraft before each flight. So did Gus Grissom and his Apollo 1 crew. The problem was, no one at NASA or North American was controlling the process to keep it in line with established fire-prevention rules, which called for any flammable materials to be at least 12 inches away from any possible ignition source. By the time Apollo 1 was ready to be shipped to Cape Canaveral in August 1966, one North American engineer described the situation inside the command module as “wall-to-wall Velcro.” The issue surfaced near the end of an all-day review of the spacecraft in Downey, California, and after a protracted back-and-forth between NASA and North American engineers, Joe Shea put an end to the discussion. “Walk through the goddamned spacecraft,” he said, and make sure the Velcro and other flammable materials are cleaned up.

But they weren’t cleaned up. As the spacecraft was checked out at Kennedy Space Center, technicians added even more Velcro. They also installed nylon nets to catch items dropped during tests. Samples of these materials had dutifully been tested for flammability in pure oxygen—at 5 psi. Not until after the fire would the review board determine that at 16.7 psi, they burn at least twice as fast.

Meanwhile, throughout the fall of 1966 Joe Shea and his staff battled a formidable array of problems with Apollo 1, everything from an environmental control system that had burst into flames during a test to indications that when the service module’s propellant tanks were pressurized, they might suddenly explode. Eclipsed by such threats, the situation with flammable materials was rarely on Shea’s radar.

Then, in early October, Shea got a letter from Hilliard Paige, a vice president at General Electric, whose NASA contract included serving as a watchdog on safety issues. Paige had recently witnessed a combustion experiment by one of his own people working at the Houston space center. “He wanted to show me the flammability of Velcro material,” Paige recalled to historian Henry Lambright in 1991. “He lit a fire in an oxygen environment, and poof. It went up in flames immediately.” Shocked, Paige asked the engineer if he’d talked to the NASA people about this. Yes, he was told, but “it didn’t seem to be registering.” In his letter, Paige gave Shea a warning that seems remarkably prescient: “I do not think it technically prudent to be unduly influenced by the ground and flight success history of Mercury and Gemini under a 100 percent oxygen environment,” Paige wrote. “The first fire in a spacecraft may well be fatal.”

(http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/9e/b6/9eb60e39-244f-4fde-90ed-b85c52c31cb2/14a_dj2017_altitudechamberksc_live-wr.jpg__600x0_q85_upscale.jpg)
Three months before the fire, the Apollo 1 crew boarded the spacecraft for an altitude chamber test (NASA)

(http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/cf/92/cf920ba6-57a3-465d-957e-43294539fb77/14c_dj2017_maintenancecrewnasaalumnileaguearticle_live-wr.jpg__600x0_q85_upscale.jpg)
The North American Aviation onsite team: (from left) James Gleaves, L.D. Reece, Jerry Hawkins, Stephen Clemmons, and Donald Babbitt. On the day of the accident, they braved the smoke and flames, trying in vain to get the astronauts out. (NASA Alumni League, Florida Chapter)

(http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/99/35/993500e8-b52f-4500-b4a6-d925d7ecabc3/14d_dj2017_interior729257_live-wr.jpg__600x0_q85_upscale.jpg)
During the investigation, a re-creation of the fire using an identical spacecraft showed how badly the astronauts' seats burned. (NASA)

(http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/60/2f/602f9da6-801f-4f2e-a8d3-1f8a61403774/14l_dj2017_capsule_737868_live-wr.jpg__600x0_q85_upscale.jpg)
Grissom ,White , and Chaffee had been lying side by side on the backs , as in this 1966 vacuum chamber test. (NASA)
c.d.n.

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 27, 2017, 17:37

Shea gave the letter to a deputy, Bill Bland, and asked him to look into it. Seven weeks later, delayed by what he called “our usual press of more significant problems,” Bland told Shea that a new study had confirmed that “our inherent hazards from fire in the spacecraft are low.” In his letter to Paige, Shea assured him everything was under control, and enclosed a copy of the study “so that you can see how secure we are.” But in a handwritten postscript, Shea revealed his own lurking doubts. “The problem is sticky,” he wrote. “We think we have enough margin to keep fire from starting—if one ever does, we do have problems.”

Preparations for Apollo 1’s flight continued. With exposed and possibly damaged electrical wiring and an ample supply of flammable materials throughout the cabin, the command module, once it was filled with high-pressure pure oxygen for a seemingly harmless test, was a bomb waiting to go off.

**********

After the fire, NASA and its contractors exerted almost superhuman effort to redesign the Apollo spacecraft. A one-piece, outward-opening hatch guaranteed quick escape in an emergency. New materials, including a fire-resistant form of Velcro, made the craft fireproof—at least in the 5 psi pure oxygen atmosphere that would be used in space. At 16.7 psi, fireproofing was impossible, but engineers devised a solution: Before launch, the command module cabin would be temporarily filled with a mixture of 40 percent nitrogen and 60 percent oxygen that would prevent the spread of a fire but would not pose any medical risks to the crew. During launch the cabin atmosphere would slowly be vented and replaced with 5 psi pure oxygen. In October 1968 the Apollo 7 astronauts flew the redesigned craft on its maiden voyage. It was one of the most remarkable recoveries in NASA’s history.

But for some, the fire’s toll was lasting. After the tragedy, Joe Shea fell into a deep depression, suffering what some have called a breakdown. In the spring of 1967 he was transferred to NASA headquarters but found himself, as he later wrote, wandering the gardens at Washington’s Dumbarton Oaks, “alone with a life I wished had ended with the three [astronauts].” Even after he left NASA to return to private industry, the accident tormented him. He would sit in his den at night, going over the events in his mind again and again. Shortly before the plugs-out test, Gus Grissom had asked him to join the astronauts in the spacecraft, to see for himself how “messy” the procedures were. Shea had considered it and decided that since there was no way to provide a communications line for him inside the command module, it wasn’t a workable idea. What if he had made a different decision? Sitting on the cabin floor during the test, would he have noticed the first spark before it became a blaze, and been able to smother it?

(http://public.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/2f/dc/2fdc6720-69e7-43eb-9730-bbb946af173a/14b_dj2017_rememberancenasahqphoto-6767923779_live.jpg)
Every winter, NASA officials (here Charles Bolden and Lori Garver in 2012) observe a day of remembrance for the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia. (NASA)

In time, Shea was able to move on. Over the years, in interviews, he defended his actions, saying—as so many at NASA did—that he never knowingly compromised the astronauts’ safety. As for his orders to clean up the spacecraft, he told Charles Murray in 1988, “The time that we felt they had to be implemented was at launch, not at some arbitrary test point a month before launch. It would have been fixed by launch time, had to have been fixed by launch time.” In fact, a walkthrough of the command module had been scheduled for January 29, 1967—two days after the fire.

Joe Shea wasn’t alone in his misperception of risk. A month after the fire, NASA’s director of manned spaceflight, George Mueller, said in a Congressional hearing that NASA’s experiences with Mercury and Gemini “had demonstrated that the possibility of a fire in the spacecraft cabin was remote.” Mueller’s words lay bare the false logic that, in the pressure to meet President Kennedy’s end-of-the-decade deadline for a lunar landing, had skewed the thinking of nearly everyone at NASA: It hasn’t bitten us, so we must be okay. This fallacy would strike NASA again, with the O-ring leaks that brought down the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the broken-off chunk of foam insulation that doomed its sister ship Columbia in 2003.

Today Apollo 1 sits in a storage facility at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, where it has rested since the review board finished its work half a century ago. Over the years the agency has turned down requests to put it on public display, but NASA managers would do well to place it in view of their own people, to remind them how unforgiving spaceflight is of blindness, of any kind.

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/apollo-fire-50-years-180960972/

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 27, 2017, 20:38

Materiały filmowe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRXnExLzapA
New Apollo 1 Tribute Opened at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

Opublikowany 27 sty 2017
On Jan. 27, a public ceremony was held at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to mark the official opening of an Apollo 1 tribute at the Apollo/Saturn V Center located in the visitor complex. Jan. 27 was the 50-year anniversary of the accidental fire that occurred inside the Apollo 1 spacecraft on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy – tragically claiming the lives of astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee. The investigation of the accident led to major design and safety improvements of the Apollo spacecraft for the coming journeys to the moon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fgpeDSaHBM

Opublikowany 26 sty 2017
NASA paid tribute to the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia during a ceremony at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. The ceremony commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 accident. (Jan. 26)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2kQ8db96LI

Hundreds Gather To Mark The 50th Anniversary Of The Apollo One Fire

Opublikowany 26 sty 2017
(AP) — Moonwalkers and dozens of others who took part in NASA's Apollo program are paying tribute to the three astronauts killed in a fire 50 years ago. On the eve of the Apollo 1 anniversary, hundreds gathered at Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Thursday to honor Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. They died at the launch pad, inside their burning spacecraft, on Jan. Among the many astronauts attending Thursday's ceremony were the two surviving crew members of Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, as well as Apollo 16 moonwalker Charlie Duke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWZ1RCdNJsA

Apollo 1 tragedy, reporter live from Cape Kennedy and Jules Bergman , ABC News, January 28, 1967

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: mss w Styczeń 27, 2017, 22:18

Ciekawe materiały fotograficzne z Apollo-1:

http://cropman.ru/a1/

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 27, 2017, 23:08

Apollo 1 crew, fallen astronauts recalled at NASA remembrance ceremony

 (https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/thumbnails/image/ksc-20170126-ph_kls01_0346.jpg?itok=neNks9el)                       
Family members of the fallen Apollo 1 crew gather beside a wreath placed at the Space Mirror Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017. From left to right are: Lowell Grissom, brother of astronaut Gus Grissom; Carly Sparks, granddaughter of Grissom; Bonnie White Baer, daughter of astronaut Ed White; and Sheryl Chaffee, the daughter of Roger Chaffee. (NASA/Kim Shiflett)

January 26, 2017 — Three astronauts who died 50 years ago this week were remembered at a public ceremony in Florida on Thursday (Jan. 26), not far from the launch pad where a fire claimed their lives.

The Apollo 1 crew members, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee, were honored at the Astronauts Memorial Foundation's NASA Day of Remembrance at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

The annual event also paid tribute to the 14 space shuttle crew members (http://www.collectspace.com//news/news-062715a-challenger-columbia-nasa-exhibit.html) and seven other U.S. astronauts who made the ultimate sacrifice while in the pursuit of exploration and whose names are engraved on the Space Mirror Memorial, a national monument to the fallen space explorers.

                          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2cmgdBtkeA
                          (NASA)

"Every year at this time, NASA remembers all of our brave family members we have lost and who've given everything, a full sacrifice, to advance this mission of exploration," said Robert Lightfoot, the newly-appointed Acting Administrator of NASA. "Particularly poignant this year because it marks 50 years since Apollo 1."

"We can't forget our fallen heroes — and they are heroes," said Lightfoot. "To those in my generation who watched as these folks pushed that envelope and ultimately got us to the moon, that is why I am here, [and] that is why most of the people of my generation are here."

Grissom, White and Chaffee were aking part in a routine "plugs out" test  (http://www.collectspace.com//news/news-012707a.html)tatop their Saturn IB rocket at Complex 34 in Cape Canaveral when a spark, set off by a short circuit, ignited a flash fire inside the pure oxygen environment of the Apollo command module. Unable to open the hatch as a result of its design and the pressure within the capsule, the astronauts died within 30 seconds of the blaze erupting due to smoke inhalation and thermal burns.

"Today we are not here for a space launch, no launch this time," said astronaut Michael Collins, who orbited Earth on Gemini 10 and orbited the moon on Apollo 11. "But just as important, [we are here] to contemplate a launch which did not take place but that in many ways was just as important as any which flew later."

                               (http://www.collectspace.com//images/news-012617b.jpg)
Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins addresses guests at Kennedy Space Center's Day of Remembrance. (NASA/Kim Shiflett)

"Without Apollo 1 and the lessons learned from it," Collins continued, "in all probability, such a fire would have taken place later in flight and not only a crew, but the spacecraft would have been lost, and NASA — with no machinery to examine — would only be able to guess at the causes and how to prevent still another occurrence."

"Yes, Apollo 1 did cause three deaths," said Collins, "but I believe it saved more than three later."

One of NASA's original seven astronauts, Grissom flew on the second U.S. piloted space flight, Mercury-Redstone 4, in July 1961, and led the first crewed mission on the space agency's two-seat spacecraft, Gemini 3, in March 1965.

White followed Grissom into Earth orbit three months later on the Gemini 4 mission, becoming the first American (and second person worldwide) to spacewalk on June 3, 1965 (http://www.collectspace.com//news/news-060315a-first-american-spacewalk-50-years.html).

Chaffee was preparing for his first flight, the maiden launch of NASA's later moon-bound space capsule, when he and his two Apollo 1 crewmates were caught up in the fire.

                                      (http://www.collectspace.com//images/news-012617c.jpg)
NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot addresses guests at Kennedy Space Center's Day of Remembrance. (NASA/Kim Shiflett)

"I cannot believe it's been 50 years since I lost my father, along with his Apollo 1 crewmates, Gus and Ed," remarked Sheryl Chaffee, who was eight years old at the time of the fire and later worked at the Kennedy Space Center for 33 years. "Although on that January day they lost their lives across the river on Complex 34 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, their story did not end there and their legacy lives on today (http://www.collectspace.com//news/news-012317a-apollo1-50th-anniversary-memorials.html)."

Three astronauts, Theodore "Ted" Freeman, Elliot See and Charles Bassett, were killed in jet aircraft accidents prior to the fire. The Apollo 1 tragedy was the first time that NASA lost a crew aboard a spacecraft, albeit on the ground.

Nineteen years (and one day) later, the STS-51L mission crew — Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Judy Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ron McNair, Greg Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe — died aboard the space shuttle Challenger when it broke apart 73 seconds into flight on Jan. 28, 1986.

It was then 17 years later, on Feb. 1, 2003, when the STS-107 mission crew — Rick Husband, William McCool, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark, and Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon — were killed aboard the space shuttle Columbia as it reentered Earth's atmosphere after a 16-day mission dedicated to science.

                               (http://www.collectspace.com//images/news-012617d.jpg)
Early morning sunlight illuminates the names on the Space Mirror Memorial at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. (NASA)

Four other astronauts are honored on the Space Mirror — Clifton "C.C." Williams, Michael Adams, Robert Lawrence and Manley "Sonny" Carter, all victims of aircraft accidents between 1967 and 1981.

Thursday's ceremony was followed by a wreath laying at the Space Mirror Memorial. In addition to Collins, Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke took part in the ceremony. Apollo veterans Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Stafford also attended, as did former space shuttle and current space station crew members.

The ceremony preceded two additional Apollo 1 memorial events set for Friday, the day of the 50th anniversary of the fire, including the reveal of a new public exhibit displaying the Apollo 1 spacecraft's three-part hatch, and an evening ceremony at Pad 34, the site of the tragedy.

http://www.collectspace.com//news/news-012617a-apollo1-50th-nasa-day-remembrance.html

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 29, 2017, 09:36

21 lutego 1967 miało dojść do pierwszego startu załogowego w ramach programu Apollo.
Pożar kabiny i śmierć załogi 27 stycznia 1967 zmieniła wszystko. Obecnie planowana wtedy misja nosi na cześć załogi nazwę Apollo 1 (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/loty/a1.htm)

Roger Bruce Chaffee (15.02.1935-27.01.1967)

Roger Chaffee został najmłodszą wtedy osobą przyjętą do korpusu amerykańskich astronautów. Po prawie 2,5 letnim treningu został przydzielony do załogi Apollo 1.
Miał być najmłodszym Amerykaninem w kosmosie. Gdyby do startu doszło 21 lutego 1967 to miałby wtedy 32 lata i 6 dni.
Jego sąsiad i przyjaciel Eugene Cernan (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/27.htm) znalazł się na orbicie w wieku 32 lat i 81 dni w 1966.
Dopiero Sally Ride (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/121.htm) w 1983 , lecąc na orbitę wokółziemską w wieku 32 lat i 23 dni ustanowiła rekord pod tym względem wśród amerykańskich astronautów.
Z żyjących astronautów amerykańskich w najwcześniejszym wieku zadebiutowała Tamara Jernigan (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/251.htm). W 1991 startując w misji STS-40 miała 32 lata i 29 dni.

Roger Bruce Chaffee (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/chaffee.htm)

https://www.nasa.gov/former-astronaut-roger-b-chaffee/

http://www.spacefacts.de/bios/astronauts/english/chaffee_roger.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/c/chaffee.html
https://www.worldspaceflight.com/bios/c/chaffee-r.php

https://www.kozmo-data.sk/kozmonauti/chaffee-roger-bruce.html
https://www.astronaut.ru/index/in_pers/13_0303.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_B._Chaffee
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Chaffee

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_ast/chaffee_roger.htm

https://www.nasa.gov/history/Apollo204/
https://www.nasa.gov/history/Apollo204/chaffee.html

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/biographies-list/bios-c/Chaffee-Roger/Chaffee-Roger-Text.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/roger-chaffee-biography-4579835

https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/roger-bruce-chaffee/
https://www.geni.com/people/Lt-Commander-Roger-B-Chaffee/6000000015842965970
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rllacey/4878736167
https://www.space.com/roger-chaffee-apollo-1

O (wz) https://www.forum.kosmonauta.net/index.php?topic=3483.msg174467#msg174467

(http://www.americaspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/chaffee.jpg)
Roger and Martha Chaffee, with their children Sheryl and Stephen. Photo Credit: Astronaut Memorial Foundation

(http://www.spacefacts.de/cancelled/patches2/apollo-1_50.jpg)

(http://www.spacefacts.de/cancelled/alternate/photo/apollo-1_3.jpg)

Załoga: Virgil  Grissom (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/3.htm) miał odbyć drugi lot orbitalny. Był też drugim Amerykaninem, który odbył lot suborbitalny. Był astronautą  Pierwszej Grupy NASA   (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/nasa1.htm). Obecnie nikt już z tej grupy nie żyje.

Edward White II (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/20.htm) był pierwszym Amerykaninem, który odbył spacer kosmiczny. Z 2 grupy astronautów NASA (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/nasa2.htm) , do której należał żyje obecnie 5 astronautów.

Roger Chaffee (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/chaffee.htm) miał zadebiutować w kosmosie. Z uwagi na jego osiągnięcia miał polecieć na orbitę bez wcześniejszego dublowania astronauty z załogi podstawowej. Należał do 3 grupy NASA  (http://lk.astronautilus.pl/astros/nasa3.htm). Dzisiaj żyje z tej grupy 8. astronautów.

(http://www.spacefacts.de/more/astronauts/photo/grissom_virgil_3.jpg)(http://www.spacefacts.de/more/astronauts/photo/white_edward_2.jpg)(http://www.spacefacts.de/more/astronauts/photo/chaffee_roger_3.jpg)

Remembering the Life and Legacy of Roger Chaffee on His 80th Birthday
By Ben Evans February 15th, 2015

(...) Born in Grand Rapids, Mich., on 15 February 1935, the son of Don and Blanche Chaffee, his interest in aviation began at an early age. His father had been a barnstorming pilot, who flew a Waco 10 biplane and served as chief inspector of army ordnance at the Doehler-Jarvis plant in Grand Rapids during World War II, and it was he who took the young Roger flying over Lake Michigan in 1942. This seeded an ambition in the boy’s mind to become a pilot, and within a few years he and his father were building model aircraft. During this period, Chaffee developed a keen love of guns and hunting from his grandfather and, whilst in the fifth grade, became interested in music and played the French horn, later the cornet, and eventually the trumpet. (...)

He entered Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Ill., in September 1953, and by the end of his first academic year had settled on aeronautical engineering and transferred to Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind. During the summer of 1954, he was scheduled for an eight-week duty aboard the battleship U.S.S. Wisconsin, but almost failed the preparatory training, due to his poor performance in the eye examination. “One eye was so weak that he nearly was failed on the spot,” wrote Mary C. White in a biography of Chaffee for the NASA History Office. “However, the attending physician gave him a break and told him that he would be allowed to retake the test the next morning. Passing the eye test was critical; if Chaffee did not pass the examination, he never would fly professionally. Roger spent part of the long night walking along the shores of Lake Michigan. Before dropping off to sleep, he offered numerous prayers for successful test results. The exam was repeated the next morning. Chaffee passed with flying colors.” During the cruise, he visited England, Scotland, France, and Cuba.(...)

With astronaut training as the ultimate career goal, Chaffee joined a pool of 1,800 applicants for the second NASA intake in September 1962. In January of the following year, he entered the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, to work toward a master’s degree in reliability engineering, but in June 1963 was invited to begin screening for the third class of astronauts. His eye examinations, this time, showed no concerns, although physical testing highlighted a very small lung capacity, but this did not prevent Chaffee’s selection in October. He was on a hunting trip in Michigan at the time and, aged just 28, became the youngest person ever selected by NASA at that point in time for astronaut training.(...)

Chaffee and Gene Cernan were both lieutenants, earning no more $10,000 per annum, but the lucrative astronaut contracts with Life magazine allowed them to buy lots on Barbuda Lane, where they built their houses, side by side, and separated by a thin wooden fence. “We moved in within ten days of each other,” wrote Cernan in his memoir, The Last Man on the Moon. “Roger had the first swimming pool on the block and I built a walk-in bar in my family room, so we became a gathering place for many parties.” (...)

Sadly, it was not to be, and Chaffee today lies in Section 3 of Arlington National Cemetery. Had he flown Apollo 1, it remains conjectural where fate might have carried him. He was certainly keen to participate in a lunar landing, although space historian Dave Shayler noted in his book Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions that Deke Slayton, then-head of the Flight Crew Operations Directorate (FCOD), intended to transfer Chaffee to the Apollo Applications Program (AAP), which eventually morphed into the Skylab space station.

http://www.americaspace.com/?p=76882


'Fire in the Cockpit': Remembering the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 1
By Ben Evans[/b]

(...) Today, Pad 34 is overgrown by bushes, weeds, and a handful of wild pepper trees, as it decays in the salty Atlantic air. A faded “Abandon in Place” sign adorns one of its skeletal legs, whilst near its base are a pair of plaques, memorializing the loss of an astronaut who almost drowned at the end of his first spaceflight, the loss of America’s first spacewalker, and the loss of the man who would have been the youngest U.S. citizen ever to journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere. The plaques dedicate themselves to Grissom, White, and Chaffee and note simply: “Launch Complex 34, Friday, 27 January 1967, 1831 Hours,” paying tribute to the men’s “ultimate sacrifice,” a half-century ago. Nearby are three granite benches, one apiece to honor the fallen men. (...)

(...) Suddenly, and without warning, controllers noticed the crew’s biomedical readings jump. This was a tell-tale indicator of increased oxygen flow in their space suits. At the same time, around 6:30:54 p.m., other sensors registered a brief power surge aboard Apollo 1. Ten seconds later came the first cry from the spacecraft.

It was Roger Chaffee’s voice.

And it was just one word.

“Fire!”

część 1 http://www.americaspace.com/?p=97507


Now, as the normally dark hatch window turned white, Slayton realized that something drastically abnormal was occurring. At 6:31 p.m., Chaffee called “Fire” and, within seconds, further frantic calls emanated from Apollo 1. “We’ve got a fire in the cockpit,” Chaffee yelled. “Let’s get out. We’re burning up!” Finally, there was a blood-curdling shriek.

On the first floor of Pad 34, technician Gary Propst could clearly see Ed White on his monitor. The astronaut’s arms were raised over his head, fiddling to open the CM’s heavy, two-piece hatch. Propst could not understand why the men did not simply blow the hatch, little realizing that its inherent design made this impossible. White had to use a ratchet to laboriously release six bolts spanning the circumference of the inner section of the hatch. Years later, astronaut Dave Scott—who had trained as White’s backup between March and December 1966—wrote in his autobiography, Two Sides of the Moon, that during training, he and White weightlifted the hatch over their heads whilst lying supine in their Apollo couches. Now, in the few seconds he had available before being overcome by smoke, White barely had chance to begin loosening the first bolt.

Tragically, it made little difference. In normal conditions, it would require 90 seconds at best, and even the super-fit White had been unable to do it in less than two minutes during training. However, fire was gorging Apollo 1 and the accumulation of hot gases sealed the hatch shut with tremendous force. No man on Earth could possibly have opened the hatch under such circumstances.(...)

Slayton and flight surgeon Fred Kelly arrived at the base of Pad 34 a few minutes later. They realized that it would take hours to remove the dead men from Apollo 1, because the heat had caused everything to melt and fuse together. Moreover, there remained a very real risk that the heat could accidentally trigger the Saturn IB’s escape tower and the pad was cleared of all personnel. Not until the early hours of 28 January 1967 were the bodies removed. None of them had suffered life-threatening burns and all had died from asphyxia when their oxygen hoses burned and their suits rapidly filled with poisonous smoke.(...)

In his autobiography, Deke, Slayton described it the “worst day” of his career, and even the normally teetotal astronaut Frank Borman admitted that he went out and got drunk after the accident. “I’m not proud to admit it,” Borman once said, “but … we ended up throwing glasses, like a scene out of an old World War One movie.” The wives of the three dead men—Betty Grissom, Pat White, and Martha Chaffee—later sued North American for its shoddy spacecraft. Each received hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation in 1972.(...)

Część 2 http://www.americaspace.com/?p=97616

EDIT 15.02.23
https://twitter.com/NASAhistory/status/1625910314347769872

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 29, 2017, 11:29

Kennedy Space Center's NASA Day of Remembrance Honors Fallen Astronauts

By Bob Granath
NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida Jan. 26, 2017

On Jan. 26, 2017, Kennedy Space Center employees and guests paid their respects to astronauts who have perished in the conquest of space. The annual Kennedy Day of Remembrance activities included a ceremony in the Center for Space Education at Kennedy's visitor complex. The observance was hosted by the Astronauts Memorial Foundation (AMF), paying tribute to those who acknowledged space is an unforgiving environment, but believed exploration is worth the risk.

(https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/ksc-20170126-ph_kls01_0262.jpg)
Gemini 10 and Apollo 11 astronaut Mike Collins, served as keynote speaker for the Kennedy Space Center's NASA Day of Remembrance ceremony which took place in the Astronauts Memorial Foundation's Center for Space Education at Kennedy's visitor complex.
Credits: NASA/Kim Shiflett

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/kennedy-space-centers-nasa-day-of-remembrance-honors-fallen-astronauts


Grissom, White, and Chaffee: On 50th Anniversary of Apollo 1 Fire, America Remembers
January 27th, 2017  By Ben Evans [/b]

(...) Early in 1966, Chaffee’s hard work at NASA was rewarded with assignment to the third seat on the very first piloted Apollo mission. Despite his age, he very quickly gained the respect of his crewmates. “Roger is one of the smartest boys I’ve ever run into,” said Gus Grissom in one of his final interviews to The New York Times. “He’s just a damn good engineer. There’s no other way to explain it. When he starts talking to engineers about their systems, he can just tear those damn guys apart.” (...)

Sylwetki astronautów: http://www.americaspace.com/?p=97874#more-97874

Apollo 1 tragedy remembered 50 years later
January 27, 2017 William Harwood

(...) “Things were going so bad with the tests I was in charge of running in that spacecraft, the glycol (coolant) was leaking, there were electrical shorts, communications were cutting out,” Stafford said Friday during a memorial at the Kennedy Space Center. “I remember, John Young said ‘go to the moon? Hell, this thing will never make it to Earth orbit.’ It was so bad I called the test office and said we’ll come back when you get this spacecraft fixed.” (...)[/b]

http://spaceflightnow.com/2017/01/27/apollo-1-tragedy-remembered-50-years-later/


Została otworzona wystawa “Ad Astra Per Aspera – A Rough Road Leads to the Stars” na której po 50 latach można zobaczyć 3 włazy Apollo 1.

(https://i2.wp.com/fightersweep.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/whate-chaffee-grisson-apollo-1-tribute.jpg?resize=630%2C420&ssl=1)

Video: Apollo 1 tribute opens at the Kennedy Space Center
January 27, 2017 Spaceflight Now

On the 50th anniversary of the launch pad fire that killed the Apollo 1 astronauts, an immersive exhibit area paying tribute to the three men has opened at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s Saturn V Center.

Called “Ad Astra Per Aspera – A Rough Road Leads to the Stars,” the permanent exhibition carries the blessings of the families of Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White II and Roger Chaffee. It showcases clothing, tools and models that define the men as their parents, wives and children saw them as much as how the nation viewed them.(...)[/b]

http://spaceflightnow.com/2017/01/27/video-apollo-1-tribute-opens-at-the-kennedy-space-center/


Families, NASA honor fallen astronauts
January 28, 2016 William Harwood

(...)Barbara Morgan, McAuliffe’s backup in the Teacher in Space program, never gave up the dream of flying in space and eventually would join NASA as a professional astronaut, flying in space aboard the shuttle Endeavour in 2007. Speaking at the memorial service Thursday, Morgan recalled Scobee as “a deep and poetic thinker and a very loving person.”

“Dick taught me that a true leader guides more than he commands,” she said. “A true leader seems to walk beside us rather than ahead of us, and when we arrive at our goal we realize that he was already there long before us. Dick was there for us.” (...)[/b]

http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/01/28/families-nasa-honor-fallen-astronauts/


50 years on, reminders of Apollo 1 beckon a safer future
January 26, 2017 by Chris Gebhardt

(http://lk.astronautilus.pl/loty/a1pat.jpg)

(...) The primary objectives of the planned up-to two week mission were to test the launch capabilities of the Saturn IB rocket, measure and verify the overall launch performance of the integrated Apollo/Saturn launch stack, monitor ground station tracking performance, and verify control facilities operations. (...)

Crew selection and naming of the mission:

Prior to those delays, the prime crew for Apollo 204 was selected internally in January 1966, with Deke Slayton, Director of Flight Crew Operations, choosing Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom as Command Pilot, Edward H. White II as Senior Pilot, and Donn F. Eisele as Pilot.

Eisele then dislocated his shoulder twice in the weightless training aircraft, and Slayton replaced him with Roger B. Chaffee.

(https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/A1prayer.jpg)

The prime crew was announced to the public on 21 March 1966, along with the original backup crew: James McDivitt, David Scott, and Russell Schweickart.

Of the prime crew, Grissom was the most experienced, with two spaceflights to his name.  White had one spaceflight under his belt, and Chaffee was a rookie.

After their selection, Grissom, White, and Chaffee began referring to the mission as Apollo 1, though NASA did not recognize that name officially at first.

In June 1966, NASA officially gave the crew permission to use the name Apollo 1 on their mission patch – though internal documentation continued, even after the accident, to refer to the flight as Apollo 204.

The first public reference to “Apollo 1” subsequently appeared in a newspaper on 4 August 1966; and when the CM (Command Module) – CM-012 – for the mission arrived at the Kennedy Space Center, FL, on 26 August 1966, its packaging bore the label – printed by the manufacturer, not NASA – “Apollo One”. (...)[/b]

(https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Apollo_One_CM_arrival_KSC.jpg)

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2017/01/50-years-on-apollo-1-safer-future/

http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2017/01/26/apollo-1-hatch-display-50-years-after-tragedy/97110846/
http://www.astronautsmemorial.org/sheryl-l-chaffee-bod.html
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/apollo-1-crew-honored
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/apollo-1-crew-honored-in-new-tribute-exhibit
https://fightersweep.com/6906/50-years-ago-today-apollo-1-capsule-fire-kills-crew/

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 29, 2017, 11:30

Zdjęcia z 50 rocznicy upamiętniającej astronautów Apollo 1

(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/00725f04d6c6387eff2015a2988c03275912f375/c=11-0-3799-2848&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/26/Brevard/Brevard/636210693962782320-NASA-Day-of-Remembrance-1.jpg)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/940a3586edabb3ccf75c9713d001e5fdb623660d/c=174-0-3835-2753&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/26/Brevard/Brevard/636210693918477468-NASA-Day-of-Remembrance-n11.jpg)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/cf2c44fe70153ed63bfed73cd7885767d001304b/c=72-0-2014-1460&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/26/Brevard/Brevard/636210693906465237-NASA-Day-of-Remembrance-n12-Buzz.jpg)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/ba4c4666933c305062a4a7c12d5fde476b163e6b/c=136-0-1418-964&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/26/Brevard/Brevard/636210693863876418-NASA-Day-of-Remembrance-5.jpg)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/11f7d37eb205b59eebbc361d1db737bbd9380a9d/c=175-0-3467-2475&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/26/Brevard/Brevard/636210693890552931-NASA-Day-of-Remembrance-7.jpg)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/98c58228cc387c49895fc2c132745e9f6ef1441c/c=0-49-2632-2028&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/26/Brevard/Brevard/636210693883064787-NASA-Day-of-Remembrance-8.jpg)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/66ade213abfdb7e6ec4d1bc43e4017a231caffff/c=270-0-3427-2374&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/26/Brevard/Brevard/636210693881972766-NASA-Day-of-Remembrance-n10.jpg)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/02c280823b4c28db80c395fd8083c7848bc20825/c=269-0-3884-2718&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/26/Brevard/Brevard/636210693949990074-NASA-Day-of-Remembrance-n12.jpg)

Apollo 1 Memorial

(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/16ef5e67057989a904c714817ad96ee9cac86943/c=285-0-4021-2809&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/27/Brevard/Brevard/636211469525097777-Apollo-1-Memorial-8.JPG)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/926fbc3dda91f4e2988eb8973966974c06d6097b/c=256-0-4257-3008&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/27/Brevard/Brevard/636211469510589684-Apollo-1-Memorial-1.JPG)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/926fbc3dda91f4e2988eb8973966974c06d6097b/c=256-0-4257-3008&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/27/Brevard/Brevard/636211469416521081-Apollo-1-Memorial-5.JPG)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/99a774e2a128bc7dcb890bdcf6e82de0009f4e43/c=0-73-3194-2475&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/27/Brevard/Brevard/636211469612302336-Apollo-1-Memorial-10.JPG)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/4d055b84da6fa01ded0ccca3d1c124ab2803e7ac/c=260-0-3460-2406&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/27/Brevard/Brevard/636211469523537767-Apollo-1-Memorial-9.JPG)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/557eb50c81e871210650e01f04c0a1999bb77f0e/c=306-0-4075-2834&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/27/Brevard/Brevard/636211469405289009-Apollo-1-Memorial-6.JPG)
(http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/302c73b53486b0d1406c98cda90a5484e30ae985/c=0-55-3118-2399&r=x393&c=520x390/local/-/media/2017/01/27/Brevard/Brevard/636211565814187476-Apolo-1-memorial.jpg)

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2017/01/26/nasa-honors-apollo-1-crew-ceremony-exhibit/96668888/

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 29, 2017, 11:30

Wystawa “Ad Astra Per Aspera – A Rough Road Leads to the Stars”  w Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex na Florydzie

NASA displays Apollo 1 command module hatches 50 years after fatal fire
Jan. 27, 2017

(...)As the central display case in "Ad Astra Per Aspera" fades from a video montage to clear glass, visitors get their first look at those three hatches — the outer boost protective cover hatch, the heat shield hatch and the inner structure hatch — that sealed the astronauts' fates.

"A lot of people do not even understand that there were three hatches, let alone the generations that followed, who were born long after this event took place — they do not remember these," said Berrios. "We wanted to make [their display] very intuitive and easy to understand, and tasteful and ethereal, so that people can see that this was a tough thing to see and go through, but maintain the dignity of it as well."

The hatches are presented exactly as they were found in storage at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.(...)

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-012717a-apollo1-ad-astra-per-aspera-exhibit.html

(http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-012717a/004.jpg)
The exhibit includes memorabilia and artifacts from the Apollo 1 astronauts' personal and professional lives, including the maneuvering gun used by Ed White during the first American spacewalk and all three astronauts' NASA ID badges. (collectSPACE)

(http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-012717a/007.jpg)
The Apollo 1 command module hatches: the outer boost protective cover hatch (left), the outer ablative hatch (middle) and main spacecraft hatch. Under normal circumstances, it would take 90 seconds to open the hatches to extract a crew. (collectSPACE)

(http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-012717a/010.jpg)
(http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-012717a/012.jpg)
(http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-012717a/008.jpg)
The post-Apollo 1 fire redesigned Apollo command module hatch could be opened in just five seconds and it swung outwards. (collectSPACE)

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-012717b-apollo1-ad-astra-per-aspera-exhibit.html

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 29, 2017, 13:33

50 rocznica pożaru Apollo 1
BY MICHAŁ MOROZ ON 28 STYCZNIA 2017

(http://kosmonauta.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Apollo-1-crew-e1485632727894.jpg)
Załoga Apollo 1/NASA

27 stycznia minęła pięćdziesiąta rocznica pierwszej poważnej tragedii w historii amerykańskiego programu kosmicznego. W pożarze kapsuły na stanowisku startowym zginęło trzech astronautów.

Apollo 204 miał być pierwszym załogowym lotem nowego statku kosmicznego. W skład trzyosobowej załogi weszli doświadczeni astronauci Virgil Grissom i Edward White. Wraz z nimi po raz pierwszy w kosmos miał polecieć Roger Chaffee. Miesiąc przed startem załoga przeprowadzała testy w hermetycznie zamkniętej kapsule na stanowisku startowym numer 34.
Iskra w niezabezpieczonym przewodzie doprowadziła do pierwszej wielkiej tragedii amerykańskiego programu kosmicznego. W atmosferze składającej się w 100% z czystego tlenu pożar rozprzestrzenił się bardzo szybko, zaś astronauci w ciągu kilkunastu sekund udusili się toksycznymi oparami oraz tlenkiem węgla.

Pożar Apollo 204 miał ogromny wpływ na cały program załogowych lotów kosmicznych. W przeprojektowanej kapsule Apollo całkowicie zrezygnowano z atmosfery składającej się z czystego tlenu, na rzecz cięższego, ale bezpieczniejszego rozwiązania mieszanki tlenu i azotu. Przeprojektowano wiele układów wewnętrznych w tym właz, który w nowej wersji miał zainstalowane ładunki pirotechniczne (błyskawicznie zwalniające rygle blokujące go na miejscu) a także otwierał się na zewnątrz, co umożliwiało jego otwarcie w przypadku zwiększonego ciśnienia w kabinie. Zmieniono przebieg układów elektrycznych i wyposażono kabinę w materiały niepalne. Poprawiono również izolację przewodów.

(http://kosmonauta.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Michael_Collins_Apollo_1_anniversary.jpg)
Michael Collins przemawia na uroczystości z okazji 50 lecia katastrofy Apollo 1 / NASA

W zasadzie można powiedzieć, że powstał zupełnie nowy wariant kapsuły załogowej. Zmiany te umożliwiły później bezpieczny lot człowieka na Księżyc. Dla uczczenia ofiary astronautów lot został później przemianowany na Apollo 1.

W pięćdziesiątą rocznicę katastrofy NASA zorganizowała specjalną uroczystość, w której brał udział Robert Lightfood, nowy pełniący obowiązki administratora NASA. Przemowy wygłosili również Michael Collins, uczestnik misji Apollo 11 oraz Sheryl Chaffee, córka Rogera Chaffee. Uczczeni zostali także astronauci, którzy zginęli w późniejszych katastrofach wahadłowców Challenger i Columbia. Rocznice największych katastrof amerykańskiego programu kosmicznego odbywają się w podobnym terminie. Pożar Apollo 1 wydarzył się 27 stycznia, Challenger uległ zniszczeniu 28 stycznia, a Columbia rozpadła się 1 lutego.

http://kosmonauta.net/2017/01/50-rocznica-pozaru-apollo-1/#prettyPhoto

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 31, 2017, 14:27

Rocznica wypadku Apollo 1
BY MICHAŁ MOROZ ON 28 STYCZNIA 2009

(http://kosmonauta.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/_images_velollah_a1crew.jpg)

27 stycznia minęła 42 rocznica pierwszej poważnej tragedii w historii amerykańskiego programu kosmicznego. W pożarze kapsuły na stanowisku startowym zginęła trójka astronautów. To miał być pierwszy lot nowej amerykańskiej kapsuły w misji Apollo 204. W załogę wchodzili doświadczeni astronauci Virgil Grissom i Edward White. Do swojego pierwszego lotu przygotowywał się z nimi Roger Chafee. Miesiąc przed startem załoga przeprowadzała testy w hermetycznie zamkniętej kapsule na stanowisku startowym numer 34.

Iskra w niezabezpieczonym przewodzie doprowadziła do pierwszej wielkiej tragedii amerykańskiego programu kosmicznego. W atmosferze składającej się w 100% z czystego tlenu pożar rozprzestrzenił się bardzo szybko. W ciągu kilkunastu sekund załoga udusiła się.

Katastrofa spowodowana pożarem Apollo 204, odcisnęła ogromny wpływ na cały program załogowych lotów kosmicznych. W przeprojektowanym Apollo całkowicie zrezygnowano z pomysłu atmosfery czysto tlenowej, na rzecz cięższego, ale bezpieczniejszego rozwiązania mieszanki tlenu i azotu. Przeprojektowano wiele układów wewnętrznych w tym właz, który w nowej wersji miał zainstalowane ładunki pirotechniczne (błyskawicznie zwalniające rygle blokujące go na miejscu) oraz otwierał się na zewnątrz, co umożliwiało jego otwarcie w przypadku zwiększonego ciśnienia w kabinie. Zmieniono przebieg układów elektrycznych i wyposażono kabinę w materiały niepalne. Poprawiono izolację przewodów.

W zasadzie można powiedzieć, że powstał zupełnie nowy wariant kapsuły załogowej. Zmiany te umożliwiły później bezpieczny lot człowieka na Księżyc. Dla uczczenie ofiary astronautów lot został później przemianowany na Apollo 1.
http://kosmonauta.net/2009/01/rocznica-wypadku-apollo-1/

2) 31.01.2023
Mocne słowa, które wygłosił Gene Kranz 30.01.1967
https://twitter.com/NASAhistory/status/1752368049489842566

Cytuj

#OTD in 1967, three days after the fire that took the lives of Grissom, White, and Chaffee, Flight Director Gene Kranz spoke candidly with the flight controllers:
"From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.' Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills."
"Tough and competent" became the watchwords that would guide them from that day forward.
Read Kranz's memories from the day: http://go.nasa.gov/5249

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Październik 18, 2018, 02:56

Biografie szczegółowsze załogi

https://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/zorn/grissom.htm
https://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/zorn/white.htm
https://history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/zorn/chaffee.htm

W wieku 91 zmarła wdowa astronauty Betty Grissom

Betty Grissom, Who Sued in Astronaut Husband’s Death, Dies at 91
By Katharine Q. Seelye Oct. 11, 2018

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/10/12/obituaries/12GRISSOM2/merlin_145125363_740415a9-c4fc-4f4f-b1dd-4580701edd11-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp)
The astronaut Virgil Grissom was reunited with his wife, Betty, and their sons, Scott (left) and Mark, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida after his three-orbit flight in 1965. He was killed in a launchpad fire less than two years later.CreditCreditAssociated Press

Betty Grissom, the widow of the astronaut Virgil Grissom, whose death in a launchpad fire in 1967 led her to sue a NASA contractor, died on Saturday at her home in Houston. She was 91.

Her son Mark confirmed the death. He said neighbors had noticed that Ms. Grissom had picked up her morning newspaper but not her afternoon mail and went to check on her. She had died while sorting the laundry, he said, and the cause of death was not known.

Virgil Grissom, known as Gus, one of the seven original Mercury astronauts immortalized by Tom Wolfe in his book “The Right Stuff,” was the second American in space, after Alan Shepard. He was also the command pilot of Apollo 1, which was intended to test the Apollo capsule for flights to the moon.

But during a routine test at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, an electrical fire swept through the command module, killing all three astronauts aboard — Mr. Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee.

It was the first fatal accident in the history of the United States space program. Mr. Grissom was 40.

Multiple investigations followed. While they never pinpointed the source of the fire, they concluded that several design flaws, including a pure oxygen atmosphere inside the cabin, had exacerbated it. In addition, the hatch door was difficult to open, preventing the crew from escaping.

NASA subsequently undertook major modifications in design, materials and procedures, including making nonflammable spacesuits. Combustible materials in the cabin were replaced with self-extinguishing versions.

Nearly four years after the fire, Mr. Grissom’s widow, who was raising two sons on her own, filed a multimillion-dollar wrongful death suit against the Apollo program’s primary contractor, North American Rockwell. (The government itself cannot be sued.)

The statute of limitations for wrongful death for survivors was two years and had expired, said Ronald D. Krist, the Houston lawyer who represented Ms. Grissom. But the general negligence statute was four years and had not expired, allowing her to sue for Mr. Grissom’s pain and suffering. She settled for $350,000, or about $2.2 million in today’s dollars.

Her action brought Ms. Grissom considerable grief, with strangers accusing her of being unpatriotic and the close-knit space community shunning her.

The experience embittered the family, said Mark Grissom, who was 13 when his father died.

“We got the dark side of NASA,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “People who were my friends were no longer my friends. A lot of people turned their back on us, and Mom got a lot of hate mail. They were like, ‘How dare you sue NASA?’ We were no longer part of the NASA family.”

Mr. Krist said that NASA had forwarded her a note from one critic who said that Ms. Grissom should not be filing a suit because her husband had assumed a certain amount of risk by being an astronaut.

But Mr. Krist, a product-liability lawyer, said the astronauts had a right to expect that their capsule would be properly designed and that all prudent precautions would be taken to protect them. “The capsule was anything but fireproof,” he said.

In any case, Mr. Krist said, the suit made it easier for the families of the other two astronauts who were killed to receive compensation without having to go to court.

“Despite the criticism, she never flinched,” Mr. Krist said of Ms. Grissom. “She never regretted the lawsuit and never hesitated in her commitment to see it through.”

Betty Lavonne Moore was born on Aug. 8, 1927, in Mitchell, Ind., to Claude and Pauline (Sutherlin) Moore. Her father worked at a cement plant. She grew up in Mitchell and met Mr. Grissom in high school. They soon married, and she got a job as a late-night telephone operator for Indiana Bell while he studied mechanical engineering at Purdue University on the G.I. Bill.

(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/10/12/obituaries/12GRISSOM4/merlin_117373610_dc9d842a-7168-4e19-90ad-9bf3402398ae-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp)
Ms. Grissom spoke with friends and guests at a memorial event at Cape Canaveral on Jan. 27, 2017, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo disaster.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times

In addition to her son Mark, Ms. Grissom is survived by another son, Scott; two grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Her sister, Mary Lou Fosbrink, is deceased.

In the 1983 movie adaptation of “The Right Stuff,” Ms. Grissom was portrayed by Veronica Cartwright and Mr. Grissom by Fred Ward.

When she received news of her husband’s death in 1967, Ms. Grissom was at a friend’s house for their weekly poker game. She said at the time that she had “already died 100,000 deaths” being married to an astronaut.

An early scare came in July 1961 after Mr. Grissom, as the second American in space, had successfully completed a 15-minute suborbital flight under the Mercury program. He nearly drowned when his capsule landed in the Atlantic Ocean and sank after the hatch blew off prematurely.

On Jan. 27, 2017, on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo disaster, Ms. Grissom and her family attended a small memorial ceremony at Cape Canaveral on Launch Complex 34, the now-crumbling concrete site where her husband’s capsule had been engulfed in flames.

The site was decorated with three red, white and blue floral wreaths provided by the Grissom family to honor all three men who had perished. She and her family had come annually on the anniversary of the fire, but she said she sensed that this would be her last time.

In contrast to the way she had been shunned in earlier days, Ms. Grissom was the center of attention, according to an account in The New York Times.

She told an interviewer that her husband’s sacrifice had helped pave the way for future missions in which other astronauts made it to the moon.

Still, she said, “I’m pretty sure he got to the moon before they did.”

“Of course he didn’t make it,” she added, “but in spirit I think he was already there.”

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2018, on Page B13 of the New York edition with the headline: Betty Grissom, 91, Who Sued NASA Contractor, Dies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/obituaries/betty-grissom-dead.html

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 28, 2019, 18:20

Wczoraj minęły 52 lata od tragedii załogi Apollo 1

'Isn't That Enough?' Remembering Grissom, White and Chaffee, Fallen Crew of Apollo 1
By Ben Evans, on January 27th, 2019

(https://www.americaspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/grissom2.jpg)
Unwilling to fly a desk in the aftermath of World War II, Grissom left the U.S. Air Force, but subsequently rejoined the service and rose to become one of its most accomplished fliers. Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

“I’m a pilot. Isn’t that enough?”

Virgil Ivan Grissom had already established himself as America’s second man in space, the first NASA astronaut to make two space missions and the first human to eat a corned-beef sandwich aboard an Earth-circling spacecraft by the time of Apollo 1. Born in the Midwestern town of Mitchell, Ind., on 3 April 1926, he was nicknamed “Greasy Grissom” as a child and his small stature—just five feet and four inches—led him to grow up with a determination to “prove I could do things as well as the big boys.”

His father worked for almost a half-century on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and Grissom, though too small to participate in many school sports, joined the Boy Scouts and led the Honor Guard. He delivered newspapers and, in the summer, picked peaches and cherries for local growers in order to earn enough money to date his sweetheart, Betty Moore. The couple married in July 1945. Grissom was described by his school principal as “an average, solid citizen, who studied just about enough to get a diploma,” but his lasting regret was being unable to fight for his country in the theater of World War II. (...)

(http://www.americaspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/geminiiv.jpg)
Gemini IV crewmen Jim McDivitt (left) and Ed White prepare for a water egress training exercise in the Gulf of Mexico in April 1965. Photo Credit: NASA

“Two full-course dinners, then dessert”

Long before his untimely death, aged 36, aboard Apollo 1, Edward Higgins White II had cemented his credentials as a record-setter in America’s space program. For on 3 June 1965, on his one and only space mission, the Air Force major became the first U.S. citizen to leave the confines of his spacecraft and perform a session of Extravehicular Activity (EVA). In so doing, White became the second human to perform a spacewalk—after Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov—and, at the time of writing, he stands as the third least-experienced spacewalker of all time. Yet the time spent in near-total vacuum by White on 3 June 1965 were pivotal in turning America’s fortunes around and taking the lead in the space race back from the Soviet Union.

Son of a West Point graduate and Air Force major-general, White was born in San Antonio, Texas, on 14 November 1930. Self-discipline, persistence, and a determination to achieve personal goals was a mantra for his early life. He first took the controls of an aircraft, under his father’s supervision, at the age of 12, and throughout his childhood the White family traveled to bases across the United States, from the East Coast to Hawaii. There was never any question that White would follow in his father’s footsteps to West Point. Whist at the Military Academy, he excelled in academics and athletics, serving as half-back on the football team, making the track team, and setting a new record in the 400-meter hurdles. So impressive were his credentials that he missed selection for the United States’ track team in the 1952 Olympics…by just 0.4 seconds.

Whilst at West Point, he met his future wife, Pat Finnegan, and upon graduation in 1952 enlisted in the Air Force. Initial flight instruction in Florida and receipt of his wings were followed by assignments in Germany, where he piloted F-86 Sabre and F-100 Super Sabre jets and completed the Air Force Survival School. Toward the end of the decade, as America readied for Project Mercury, White decided that he would aim for a NASA career and enrolled on a master’s degree program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He graduated in aeronautical engineering in 1959, having studied alongside another Air Force officer, named Jim McDivitt. Little did both men know that they would wind up in the same NASA astronaut class and would fly into space together. (...)

(http://www.americaspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/gulf-of-mexico-water-egress-oct66.jpg)
Backdropped by a training version of their Block 1 command module, astronauts Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee confer before a water egress training exercise in the Gulf of Mexico in October 1966. Photo Credit: NASA

“One of the smartest boys I’ve ever run into”

The third member of the ill-fated Apollo 1 crew, and the flight’s only “rookie,” might have become the youngest American in history to complete a space mission. In fact, had Roger Bruce Chaffee launched atop the Saturn IB booster on 21 February 1967, just six days after his 32nd birthday, he would have eclipsed his best friend Gene Cernan and, indeed, would have established a record which would have endured to this day. Even in more recent times, astronauts Sally Ride, Steve Hawley, and Tammy Jernigan—all of whom made their first flights aged 32—would not have been quite “young enough” to have beaten the record so cruelly snatched from Chaffee.

That said, his youth belied a talented aviator and a skilled engineer. Chaffee came from Grand Rapids, Mich., where he was born on 15 February 1935, the son of a barnstorming biplane pilot. Aged seven, he was taken flying by his father over Lake Michigan and a fascination with aviation was nurtured. As father and son built model aircraft, the young Chaffee also developed an interest in guns and hunting from his grandfather and a love of music led him to play the French horn, the cornet, and the trumpet.

Within a year of joining the Boy Scouts in 1948, he earned ten badges and the Order of the Arrow, before eventually rising to Eagle Scout and teaching swimming. An interest in mathematics and chemistry led him first to Illinois State University in September 1953 for a year, during which time he settled on aeronautical engineering as a major, then transferred to Purdue. As a Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) scholar, he undertook summer duty aboard the battleship Wisconsin. His undergraduate career also saw him teaching freshman mathematics classes and in September 1955 he met Martha Horn, who became his wife, two years later. (...)
https://www.americaspace.com/2019/01/27/isnt-that-enough-remembering-grissom-white-and-chaffee-fallen-crew-of-apollo-1/

E 28/29.01.2024
https://twitter.com/aisoffice/status/1751148498358096219

Cytuj

Reflecting on the tragedy of Apollo 1, OTD 57 years ago. To the memory of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. Never forgotten. I was 11 years old at the time & can still recall the school memorial assembly on the Monday morning after the accident.

https://twitter.com/airandspace/status/1751736143224226228

Cytuj

The Apollo 1 fire had a profound impact on the space community, especially staff and contractors that were at Pad 34 that day. 
 In this #ASQ, Matthew Beddingfield shares his grandfather James D. Gleaves's harrowing recollections from that day: https://s.si.edu/48S1Wlh

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: mss w Styczeń 27, 2020, 13:15

Dziś mija już 53 lata...

więcej: https://www.americaspace.com/2020/01/26/remembering-the-fire-project-apollos-worst-day/

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 28, 2021, 00:34

'The Slightest Glitch': Remembering The Fire, OTD in 1967
By Ben Evans, on January 27th, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSWUnWOMdTk&feature=emb_title
Video Credit: CBS News/YouTube
https://www.americaspace.com/2021/01/27/the-slightest-glitch-remembering-the-fire-otd-in-1967/

28.01.2024
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GE4LGg0WgAAMGk8?format=jpg&name=small)
Ed White was named a member of the astronaut team selected by NASA in 1962. He was the pilot for Gemini 4 and carried out the first extra vehicular activity in the US crewed space flight program, becoming the first person to control himself in space during an EVA.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GE4K0kaWUAACX6a?format=jpg&name=small)
Gus Grissom was one of the seven Mercury astronauts selected by NASA in 1959. He piloted the Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft, served as command pilot on the first crewed Gemini flight, and was the backup command pilot for Gemini 6.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GE4KZEPWkAAH94M?format=jpg&name=large)
Roger Chaffee was one of the third group of astronauts selected by NASA in 1963. He was tasked with working on flight control communications systems, instrumentation systems, and attitude and translation control systems in the Apollo Branch of the Astronaut office.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GE3FBT-WMAAtblE?format=jpg&name=large)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GE3FBT8WQAAhl1Q?format=jpg&name=medium)
Remembering the crew of Apollo 1.
On this day in 1967, astronauts Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee perished in a fire during a pre-launch test for what was to be the first crewed Apollo mission.
https://x.com/airandspace/status/1751349619034890384

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Styczeń 28, 2021, 01:03

ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 28, 1997              TAG: 9701280072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-3  EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.
SOURCE: Associated Press

DEAD APOLLO 1 ASTRONAUTS REMEMBERED

The families of the three Apollo 1 astronauts killed in a launch pad fire 30 years ago gathered in the rain Monday to remember their courage and contributions to America's race to the moon.

It was the first public ceremony in decades in memory of Virgil ``Gus'' Grissom, Edward White II and Roger Chaffee, who died inside their burning capsule on Jan. 27, 1967.

``It's still a sad thing, it really is. Yet it's uplifting,'' said White's daughter, Bonnie Baer, standing next to brother Ed and 37 other relatives who hugged in front of the astronauts' memorial at Kennedy Space Center.

``I wasn't sure that I wanted to be here, but I'm really glad that I'm here,'' Baer continued.

For Martha Chaffee, the astronaut's widow, the hardest part was hearing daughter Sheryl Chaffee Marshall, a NASA employee, pay tribute to her father.

``I don't see that they need to have something like this all the time,'' Martha Chaffee said. ``But 30 years, you know, OK. It did happen. These guys were a part of the space program. They were footsteps'' to the moon.

``It took a long time for NASA to recognize there was an Apollo 1, to admit it,'' added Lowell Grissom, the astronaut's younger brother.

Indeed, Monday's ceremony was privately arranged.

Over the years, NASA has all but ignored the anniversaries of the Apollo 1 fire even while observing just one day later - on Jan. 28 - the anniversary of the explosion of space shuttle Challenger.

Few NASA employees attended Monday's ceremony. The crowd of more than 150 people consisted mostly of relatives of the Apollo 1 crew, retired NASA officials, including Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, and tourists who just happened to be wandering by.

A private ceremony took place Monday evening at the abandoned Launch Complex 34 at Cape Canaveral Air Station, where the Apollo 1 men died. The flash fire broke out inside their spacecraft during a countdown test, apparently because a bruised or broken wire contacted metal and created sparks.

The Apollo program was put on hold for 20 months as NASA improved the spacecraft. Eventually, 12 men - all colleagues and friends of Grissom, White and Chaffee - walked on the moon.

``Our Apollo 1 astronauts knew the risk that they were taking to achieve their dreams,'' Chaffee's father, Donald, said in a strained voice from his wheelchair. ``The best thought that any of us could have are those eight words of the Boy Scout oath: `On my honor, I will do my best.' And you know, the Apollo 1 crew did just that.''
https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/VA-news/ROA-Times/issues/1997/rt9701/970128/01280072.htm

E 27.01.2024
https://twitter.com/ron_eisele/status/1750989780849205347

Cytuj

27 January 1967. The Apollo 1 crew died when their spacecraft incinerated in a launch pad fire.

https://twitter.com/NASAhistory/status/1751266320253853796

Cytuj

The lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were lost #OTD in 1967, when a fire erupted inside their spacecraft during a training exercise. Today we reflect on their sacrifice and hold safety paramount to our mission.
About Apollo 1: https://go.nasa.gov/42r3e4F

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: artpoz w Styczeń 27, 2023, 17:51

56 lat temu w roku 1967 zginęło 3 odważnych ludzi. Od lewej do prawej: Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White i Roger B. Chaffee.

Ad astra per aspera.

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: juram w Styczeń 29, 2023, 09:57

Montaż statku dla misji Apollo 1. Niestandardowa pokrywa włazu wejściowego (kolor jasno-niebieski)  przystosowana do komunikacji z systemami kontroli naziemnej. 

(https://naforum.zapodaj.net/images/2eeb67ed5f63.jpg)

Trzy oryginalne pokrywy włazu statku Apollo 1 zdemontowane po tragicznym pożarze. Foto - T. Pribyl, KOSMONAUTIX.CZ

(https://naforum.zapodaj.net/images/d7bc112046ed.jpg)

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: Orionid w Luty 03, 2023, 11:59

Mamy już wątek poświęcony temu tematowi
https://www.forum.kosmonauta.net/index.php?topic=32.msg71#msg71

55 Years Ago: The Apollo 1 Fire and its Aftermath
Feb 3, 2022

“Three valiant young men have given their lives in the nation’s service. We mourn this great loss and our hearts go out to their families.” President Lyndon B. Johnson (...)
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/55-years-ago-the-apollo-1-fire-and-its-aftermath

E 27.01.2024
https://twitter.com/airandspace/status/1619825214916907008
https://airandspace.si.edu/air-and-space-quarterly/winter-2023/tragic-day-pad-34?utm_medium=social&utm_source=NASMtwitter&utm_campaign=ASQ_W23&utm_term=apollo1

Cytuj

The Apollo 1 fire had a profound impact on the space community, especially staff and contractors that were at Pad 34 that day. 
 In the latest #ASQ, Matthew Beddingfield shares his grandfather James D. Gleaves's harrowing recollections from that day.

https://twitter.com/ron_eisele/status/1750989649076507047

Cytuj

27 January 1967. Astronauts Virgil Grissom, right, and Roger Chaffee walk across a ramp from the gantry elevator to the Apollo I Command Module at Cape Kennedy, Fla., for a launch test. They were killed later that day with fellow astronaut Edward H. White II in a spacecraft fire.

https://twitter.com/ron_eisele/status/1750989838709383313

Cytuj

Words from a man who spent much of his life accepting the risks inherent in aviation and spaceflight.

Cytuj

Apollo One. A reminder of the courage and sacrifice needed to get men to the moon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=274lQSbpkRg&t=1s
https://x.com/ron_eisele/status/1750989901317959692
https://twitter.com/ASE_Astronauts/status/1751259213475573771

Cytuj

Un Jour - Un Objet Spatial
(n° 00247 / 27 janvier 2019)
Enveloppe Accident Apollo 1 du 27 janvier 1967
signée par les parents de l'astronaute Ed White
http://souvenirsdespace.lebonforum.com/t1575p225-un-jour-un-objet-spatial#4832
#UnJourUnObjetSpatial

https://x.com/spacemen1969/status/1751188741916442626
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1#

Tytuł: Odp: Apollo 204/Apollo 1
Wiadomość wysłana przez: kanarkusmaximus w Luty 03, 2023, 16:20

Przeniosłem posty do tego wątku :)