Apollo 1

A clip from "From The Earth to The Moon", a miniseries chroncicling the United States space program, mainly the Apollo era.

These men who died in the fire during a routine test for the Apollo 1 mission, Gus Grissom, Roger Chafee, and Ed White, will always be remembered as men who gave their lives not only for the United State's mission to the moon, but also to the dream that humanity will one day be not only a citizen of Earth, but a citizen of this Star system, this Galaxy, and this Universe.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• apollo
• fire
• moon
• crew
• brave
• men
• dead
• tragedy
• accident
• inferno

[vevoyoshi]

Three american heroes..

[acerdude3]

@ECGELSV and if they were alive today and you were in there, what if they'd say the same thing. wouldn't feel all that great now will it? I didn't think so. -_-

[gasaholic47]

@thrasherfan9995 Flatly untrue. They were burned, but the burns themselves were not necessarily fatal. Read the official report, not someone else's book. the burn percentages ranged from 25-40% as I recall.

[teknstuff1]

Engineering morons

[piratesmvp]

Rest in peace, Gus, Ed, and Roger. Our nation owes you a debt of gratitude.

[TheDANNYBOYDANCER]

RIP....GRISSOM...WHITE...CHAFF­E  JANUARY 27 / 1967

[nors1999]

the 3 america heroes dead by unknown problem

[A86]

@haloman13245 - Nitrogen tetroxide leaked into the command module of the Apollo-Soyuz test (sometimes called "Apollo 18" unofficially) because Deke accidentally left the RCS thrusters open during reentry (they're supposed to close them before reentry). The fire from reentry burned some of the fuel and the fumes leaked into the cockpit. Something similar probably happened with the fuel in the RCS during the Apollo 1 fire.

Apologies to anyone who was unnerved by those details.

[A86]

@haloman13245 - Their tracheas were also burned from fire and high pressure CO2 being forced down their throats. They died of asphxiation and trauma from high pressure, heat and blast injuries. :(

*I meant nitrogen tetroxide, not nitrous oxide. Nitrogen tetroxide is a noxious chemical fume produced by the Apollo command module RCS thruster fuel when it burns. A similar fume leaked into the command module during the reentry at the end of the Apollo-Soyuz flight with Deke Slayton.

[A86]

@haloman13245 - (Warning: Grisly details ahead) From what I read the autopsy showed they probably survived the explosion, unfortunately. The autopsy showed they probably died 15-45 seconds after the hull ruptured from the spike in internal air pressure in the command module. They died of asphyxiation from being force-fed nitrous oxide and other noxious fumes from the burning chemicals and burning nylon in the capsule being forced into their breached air tubes.

[thrasherfan9995]

@csapilot1 If you read Andrew Chaikin's "Man on the Moon," the book this series was based upon, the three astronauts did not have a single burn. They died of asphyxiation, when the fire burned thru the hoses that supplied their oxygen, filling the breathing system with smoke. The fire, fed by pure oxygen under 14 psi, burned out as quickly as it started. Note that Borman said the elapsed time between the first mention of fire and the hull rupture was 15 secs.

[csapilot1]

@animalgang13 ooops, thank you...