Scott Carpenter's Guest Essay #2

On January 27, 1967, I was at the White House for the signing of a space cooperation treaty with the Soviet Union. Afterwards, at the airport on my way back to Houston, I received a call informing me about the terrible events at the Cape. I am grateful to Stephen Clemmons for remembering (and writing about) the events of that day.—Scott Carpenter

A Bitter Lesson

by Stephen Clemmons

In the coming weeks, many of us will remember the day when the deaths of three Apollo astronauts on January 27, 1967, shocked the world and brought the United States space program to its knees.

Commander Gus Grissom, Lt. Col. USAF, Command Pilot Ed White, Lt. Col USAF and Pilot Roger Chaffee, Lt. Commander USN—all experienced pilots and astronauts—were assigned to the first manned flight of the Apollo 204 spacecraft.

Most of the spacecraft ground crew that night were experienced rocket men who had worked on all the rocket programs from coast to coast since the early days of the Atlas, Titan, Mercury, and Gemini programs. They were used to rockets blowing up and working in tight quarters. But they were not prepared for what was to follow.

At 6:31 on Friday night, January 27,1967, everything we had worked for was destroyed. In the next five minutes, we would lose not only our new Apollo spacecraft but also our entire flight crew of three astronauts to fire. The three-piece hatch—about which so many had complained—took the rescue team nearly five minutes to open. Flammability tests on installed equipment had taken a back seat to intense pressures to launch. The result that night: the spacecraft was on fire with three men trapped inside. Also ablaze were the two rooms surrounding the craft.

When the last fire was out, no one was prepared for what they found inside: Three men were dead, a spacecraft destroyed, and two heavily damaged levels of the tower.

The repercussions of the accident were to tear the program apart. It crushed our long-held dreams of sending a man to the moon and made us re-examine why we were willing to risk everything to fulfill the wishes of a martyred American president, John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated during his first term in office after summoning us to embark on this grand lunar adventure.

Who was to blame? Everyone. NASA senior executives were rigid taskmasters and built an agency that did not allow for mistakes. Yet there seemed to be two levels of management—one at Kennedy, headed up by the very capable Rocco Petrone with his well-trained cadre, and the other one in Washington, D.C., supervised by political appointees who answered only to Congress and the president. The resulting rigidity created untenable working conditions at the Cape.

It all came to naught on that cool evening in late January.

A giant cloud of doom descended over the Cape. As details began to emerge from the accident investigation, we saw the shortcuts we took in the rush to get the spacecraft ready, remembered the “moon fever” that had gripped us, and resented and repented of the rigid schedules and political pressures from Washington.

It was an accident that should never have happened. But it did. And then we designed a new one-piece hatch and installed a cover on the lower equipment bay that would protect the vulnerable wiring. We changed of material used inside the capsule that would prevent the spread of a fire. A small fire extinguisher was added. We made it safer and better for those who would also risk their lives for the dream.

Forty years later, we must remember Gus, Ed, and Roger as our crewmen and as true space pioneers who lost their lives in the great race

Wherever you are on January 27 at 6:31 p.m. stop for a moment of prayer and remember our first real heroes of the Apollo program.