Apollo 1 — Fire on the Pad

WEBVTT
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Look at this. We are on episode one of eight of the Apollo series.
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This episode is called Fire on the Pad, which is the story of Apollo one.
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And this is Time Tellers, by the way. Yes. I'm Renee. And that's Dan.
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I did a whole intro and everything. That was not scripted. No,
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it was unscripted. I off the cuff.
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Just, you know. Does that mean we're going to have to do another corrections
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episode? What? You're not Dan and I'm not Renee?
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No, this is an AI episode. It is not.
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We are real people. I promise. At least some days.
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Some episodes, not. Willie, you forgot which ones those were.
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We are always real people.
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I have no idea what you are talking about. January 27th, 1967.
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Cape Kennedy, Florida. It's late afternoon and the sun is going down over the Atlantic.
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The air is warm. the kind of Florida evening where the light goes golden and
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everything looks almost too beautiful to be real.
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But is it real? I don't know.
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On launch pad 34, sitting on top of a Saturn 1B rocket, is a spacecraft called Apollo 1.
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Inside it, wearing full-pressure suits and hooked up to oxygen lines,
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are three men, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee. They've been in there for hours already.
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They're not going anywhere today. This is a ground test, a simulated countdown,
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what NASA called a plugs-out test. No rocket fuel, no ignition.
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The goal is simply to run through every system, every checklist,
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and make sure everything works before the real launch scheduled for February
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21st, less than four weeks away.
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Ooh, that's not very long away. Nope. Grissom had been annoyed all afternoon.
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The comm system keeps cutting out to persistent static that makes communication
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between the capsule and the ground almost impossible.
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He's been snapping at the ground crew. At one point, he holds up a lemon,
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an actual lemon brought exactly for
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this purpose, and asks a technician to photograph it next to the capsule.
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His way of saying, on the record, without saying it directly, this thing is a lemon.
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Was that a term we used back then? Or is that a more modern term?
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Obviously it was. Did he really actually? Yes.
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Okay, I believe you. I just, I didn't think that. Yeah, that whole lemon thing
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goes back to, like, when cars started being sold.
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Okay. In every kind of, like, vehicle. Fair.
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Privately, Grissom has been saying something more alarming. In the weeks before
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this test, he told his wife, Betty, and several colleagues that he had serious
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doubts about whether Apollo 1 was ready.
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Not a feeling, not nerves, a specific informed professional judgment from the
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most experienced astronaut in the program.
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Oh no that is such a bad bad
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very bad no good omen i don't like this story
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already it doesn't get better renee of course
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not i know i know i do
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know this story and i know it doesn't get better at 6 31 p.m the count has stopped
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the con problems have made the test essentially impossible to run properly grissom
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is on the radio frustrated saying something about how they can't expect to fly
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if they can't talk between two buildings,
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let alone to the moon. Fair, fair point. Yeah.
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And then one of the astronauts...
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Investigation was never able to conclusively determine which one,
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says something over the comm, the transcripts are garbled, but it sounds like the word, fire.
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Not that. No. Eight seconds later, a second voice, also unidentified,
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says, we've got a fire in the cockpit.
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Oh, it's got a fire in the cockpit. Yes. Fourteen seconds after that,
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the capsule ruptures from the internal pressure of the fire.
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The hatch, which opens inward and requires 90 seconds and two people to open
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under the best conditions, It is impossible to open against the force of a fire
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burning at over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
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All three men are gone within seconds. The entire fire, from first report to
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rupture, lasts less than 30 seconds. Jesus.
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Pad technicians reach the hatch five minutes later. The scene inside is devastating.
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They cannot identify the crew members by sight.
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I mean, that is... Okay, fire is devastating.
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And on the ground as well. They didn't even get the chance to launch.
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On the ground on a Friday evening in front of the launch crew.
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Who could hear it happen and couldn't do a single thing to help them?
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Welcome to Time Tellers, I'm Renee.
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And on Dan, today we're telling the whole story of Apollo 1.
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Not just the fire, but who these men were, how it happened, why it should never
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have happened, and why the worst day in NASA's history might also be the reason
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Apollo 11 succeeded two and a half years later.
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That is a heavy promise for a Friday.
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It's a heavy story, but it's an important one, and I promise it doesn't end in despair.
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These men deserve to be more than a tragedy. They deserve the whole story.
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Okay let's go before we
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talk about what happened i want to talk about who was in that capsule
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good idea because i think there's a tendency especially 50
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something years later for these names to become abstract symbols of sacrifice
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rather than actual human beings with histories and families and peculiarities
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and flaws so let's spend some time with them okay start with grissom because
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i feel like a lot of people know that name but couldn't necessarily tell you
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anything specific about him.
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Virgil Ivan Grissom goes by Gus, born in Mitchell, Indiana in 1926.
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Son of a railroad worker, the oldest of four kids, small town working class,
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the kind of American background that never gets described as glamorous,
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but produces a disproportionate number of people who end up doing extraordinary
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things simply because they're used to working hard and don't know if they're
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supposed to think small.
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He flew 100 combat missions in Korea, came home and became a test pilot at Wright-Patterson
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Air Force Base. Ooh, Dayton, Ohio.
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And aliens, which at the time was basically the world capital of experimental aviation.
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He was selected as one of the original Mercury 7 in 1959, the first class of
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American astronauts chosen from over 500 military pilot candidates.
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Grissom made the cut. Most people didn't.
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That would be a hard cut to make.
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Yeah. But in 1967, Gus Grissom was arguably the most experienced astronaut NASA hat.
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He'd flown Liberty Bell 7 and the Mercury program in 1961, only the second American in space.
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He'd commanded the first Gemini mission, Gemini 3, in 1965, alongside John Young.
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He was a presumptive commander of the first moon landing, if you'd ask a NASA
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insider in 1966, who was most likely to be the first human to walk on the moon.
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A lot of them would have said Gus Grissom.
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Wait, so he wasn't just important, he was the guy, the it guy.
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He was the guy who was supposed to be first.
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He was very much the guy. Short, about 5'7", stocky, from Mitchell,
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Indiana, not flashy like some of the others.
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John Glenn was the golden boy, Alan Shepard had the cool aristocratic thing going on.
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Scott Carpenter was the poet-philosopher of the group, Grissom was just a worker.
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Exceptionally competent, methodical, professionally unflappable,
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the kind of person other pilots trusted with their lives, without having to think about it.
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Privately, he was funny, he had a dry, sardonic sense of humor,
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but publicly he was gruff and often impatient with anything he considered a waste of time.
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He had one piece of baggage that followed him throughout his career.
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On his Mercury flight in 1961, after splashdown, the hatch of his capsule blew
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open prematurely and the capsule sank in the Atlantic.
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Grissom barely made it out. He always insisted it wasn't his fault that something
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had malfunctioned, that he hadn't touched the explosive hatch bolt.
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The Navy divers, focused on saving the capsule, almost let him drown in the process.
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NASA ultimately cleared him and put him back on flight status.
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But for years, there was a whisper in certain corners, that he'd panicked,
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that he'd blown the hatch himself, and that it had been pilot error.
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It haunted him. He was obsessive about it in a way that the people closest to
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him recognized as more than professional pride.
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It was something he needed to have put right.
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That is such a devastating irony. He spent his career being associated with
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a hatch that opened when it shouldn't have, and then he died because a hatch
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wouldn't open when it should have.
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History doesn't do its cruelty subtly. Ed White was the second man in the capsule.
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Edward Higgin White's the second.
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Son of a general, grandson of a pilot, he was in many ways everything the American
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space program wanted to put in front of a camera.
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Handsome, physically extraordinary, genuinely warm. He became the first American
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to walk in space on the Gemini 4 mission in June 1965.
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He floated outside the capsule for 23 minutes with a small handheld jet gun
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maneuvering through space.
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When Mission Control told him it was time to come back in, he refused for a while.
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He's like a dog in the backyard. He won't come back in when you call him.
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He said on a hot mic that went to the garden. I cleared up my windshield,
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my dirty dog. Yeah. Yeah.
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See how it's all smeared up there? Yeah. It looks like there's a coating on
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the outside, and you've rubbed it off. Yeah.
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You have to tell me what you've got. Jiminy 4, Houston Capcom.
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Jiminy 4, Houston Capcom. You know, the spacecraft rates are up about a one
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degree per second. It's fixing you on about a half degree per second and roll.
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I've got that. I don't know what the pictures that I've got yet. Okay.
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I can't guess. Houston Capcom. No, and I don't even know exactly where we are,
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but it looks like we're about over six.
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Jiminy 4, Houston, Capcom. No, it looks like Houston down below us.
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Jiminy 4, Houston, Capcom. Hey, guys, I'll be reading, but we're right over Houston.
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Run out and look. Jiminy 4? Jiminy 4, Houston?
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Yeah, that's Galveston Bay right there. Hey, Dad, can you see on your side of
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the spacecraft? Can you see the camera here?
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Yeah. Is it pointing at you? No, no, no, no. Which way?
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Behind the picture. I can't get the picture. Now, don't get back there where
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the... I'm not behind it.
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I might have thought about this. Come on, release your... Jiminy 4, Houston.
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Appreciate it, that. Jiminy 4, Houston. Jiminy 4, Houston.
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Jiminy 4, Houston. But still, not that part of the picture card.
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I've only got about three or four. Is that right?
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Well, I've taken a lot, but they're not very good. You're in too close for most of them.
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I finally put the focus down to about eight feet or so. Jiminy Poore, Houston.
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Flight, would you tell the force to lose the water behind you when you're trying
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to talk to him? I can't do that.
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He's on the box. Roger. Jiminy Poore, Houston.
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Jiminy 4, Houston? Yes, sir. Jiminy 4, Houston.
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You know, Ed, this thing about the reference we were talking about,
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it looks like it's sure right.
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Jiminy 4, Houston? Jiminy 4, Houston? See what the flight director's got to say.
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The flight director says get back in. Jim, what? You got any message for us?
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Jiminy 4, get back in. Okay.
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I don't know. We're coming over to the West Bay. We want you to come back in now. Roger.
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That is such a beautiful detail. He just wanted to stay in space forever,
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float out there, and never come back.
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By all accounts, he was the most
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physically fit person NASA had ever put through its selection process.
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He ran, he played golf seriously, not casually. he did everything with the kind
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of focused intensity that made people around him feel simultaneously inspired
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and slightly exhausted.
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His spacewalk photograph, this enormous grin floating above the earth with the
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blackness spaced behind him, became one of the iconic images of the whole program.
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It was also, according to virtually everyone who knew him, genuinely kind,
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not performed kindness, not public relations kindness, the real kind.
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People who worked with him talked about it specifically years later as though
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it was the thing that he most wanted you to understand about him.
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And Roger Chaffee. I feel like he gets the least attention out of the three.
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Roger Bruce Chaffee, 31 years old on the day of the fire.
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He was going to be 32 in February. He'd been selected as an astronaut in 1963
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as part of the third group, the one the press called the 14th.
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He was a rival aviator who graduated Purdue University, sharp and eager,
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and by all accounts completely well-liked by everyone who worked with him.
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Mr. Nice Guy. This was going to be his first spaceflight.
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He'd spent four years since his selection doing the unglamorous work of the backup astronaut.
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Communication support, technical liaison, the kind of work that's essential and invisible.
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He'd been assigned to Apollo 1 and had been training for it,
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with the kind of intensity that people who've been waiting a long time bring
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the things they've finally been given.
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He was ready. He was more than ready.
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However, he never got to fly. His entire NASA career was preparation for a mission
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that killed him before it launched. He was 31 years old.
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I want to ask something that's been on my mind since you started the cold open.
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Their families, where were they? Did they know what had happened and who called them?
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Betty Grissom was home in Houston. She found out when a neighbor,
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not NASA, a neighbor called her to ask if she'd heard the news on the radio.
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NASA had yet to call her. That's horrible. And this is before the internet even. Right.
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Pat White, Ed's wife, was actually at the Cape that day.
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She'd come down for the test. She was waiting at a party for some of the NASA
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staff when somebody came in with the news.
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She was told by a friend before any official notification. At least it was a friend?
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I mean, I'd assume a neighbor might be a friend, too.
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That's fair. Fair point. I mean, they kind of all lived in the same...
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They did. That is true. They did. Yeah.
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Martha Chafee was also in Houston. She also learned from a neighbor who had heard it on the news.
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None of them were called first. They all found out from other people before...
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NASA, you know, called them and told them the news.
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Or even, you know, sent somebody over as opposed to just calling them.
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Yeah, even like the military, like, they respond quickly, like as quickly as they can.
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You get notified from the military, not generally speaking your next door neighbor.
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There was no protocol. NASA never had to make those calls before.
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The program had never killed anyone. They were scrambling in every direction
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at once, securing the site, dealing with the press, managing the investigation,
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and the families got calls from neighbors listening to the radio before anyone
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from NASA picked up a phone.
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This, that is beyond enraging. These women's husbands just died in a government
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facility on a government mission.
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And they find out from neighbors?
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The failure of communication that killed those men extended in a particularly
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painful way to the people they loved most.
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I'm furious on their behalf.
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Okay, let's talk about how it happened.
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So I want to try and explain the mechanics of this. Because you're the science person. Yeah.
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No. Because I have been reading about it, and I think it's really important
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to understand that this was not a random accident.
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This was the result of specific decisions made by specific people under specific
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pressures. Sounds specific.
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Yes, it does. That's a lot of specifics. And I'd like to lay that out before
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Dan does it, because when Dan explains things,
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there's a risk they may become very technical very quickly, and I'd like everyone
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at home to follow along. That's fair.
00:16:34.452 --> 00:16:39.952
So, the capsule. It used a pure oxygen atmosphere,
00:16:40.472 --> 00:16:47.432
100% oxygen at slightly higher than sea level pressure, about 16.7 pounds per
00:16:47.432 --> 00:16:51.232
square inch, where sea level is about 14.7.
00:16:51.652 --> 00:16:56.632
They use this because it massively simplifies the life support system.
00:16:56.852 --> 00:17:03.292
You don't have to mix gases. You don't have to worry about nitrogen narcosis at altitude.
00:17:03.592 --> 00:17:05.912
The whole thing becomes much more manageable.
00:17:06.392 --> 00:17:10.712
Mercury had used it. Gemini had used it. Nobody had died.
00:17:11.272 --> 00:17:16.812
In the vacuum of space, pure oxygen at low pressure, about 5 pounds per square inch, is manageable.
00:17:17.232 --> 00:17:22.172
The risk goes up dramatically at ground level pressure, which is what the plugs out test was running.
00:17:22.892 --> 00:17:27.472
Right. And here's the thing I want to linger on, because I think this is where
00:17:27.472 --> 00:17:34.332
the real horror lives. In pure oxygen at elevated pressure, almost everything becomes fuel.
00:17:34.652 --> 00:17:37.872
Things that don't normally burn, burn.
00:17:38.172 --> 00:17:44.432
Velcro burns, foam burns, nylon burns. Even some metals will ignite and burn
00:17:44.432 --> 00:17:46.132
in pure oxygen at pressure.
00:17:46.912 --> 00:17:52.152
In the interior of Apollo 1 was absolutely packed with all of those things.
00:17:53.235 --> 00:17:57.115
A post-fire investigation found approximately 70 pounds of combustible material
00:17:57.115 --> 00:18:02.115
in the cabin, including roughly 34 miles of wire. That's a lot of mileage.
00:18:02.875 --> 00:18:07.895
34 miles of wire inside a spacecraft that is smaller than a modern SUV.
00:18:08.295 --> 00:18:15.415
And in pure oxygen at pressure, any single spark from any single piece of that
00:18:15.415 --> 00:18:17.675
wire is a potential catastrophe.
00:18:18.335 --> 00:18:22.635
And there had been sparks. There had been reports.
00:18:23.235 --> 00:18:27.855
For months before the fire, engineers working on the spacecraft had flagged
00:18:27.855 --> 00:18:34.795
wiring problems, chafed insulation, poor routing, connections that didn't need spec.
00:18:35.235 --> 00:18:39.875
These were logged, officially logged, and the program kept moving on.
00:18:40.115 --> 00:18:43.055
The most likely ignition point, according to the investigation,
00:18:43.315 --> 00:18:46.675
was a bundle of wiring routed underneath and behind Grissom's seat,
00:18:47.375 --> 00:18:49.635
in an area near the environmental control unit.
00:18:50.275 --> 00:18:53.195
The wiring passed through a small gap at the edge of the hatch,
00:18:53.415 --> 00:18:58.555
a spot where the hatch opening and closing over many months had repeatedly abraded the insulation.
00:18:59.075 --> 00:19:05.115
At some point, a spark jumped in pure oxygen at 16 plus pounds per square inch. That spark was enough.
00:19:06.095 --> 00:19:10.295
And once it started, it was over almost instantly.
00:19:10.795 --> 00:19:15.235
Fourteen seconds from first report to rupture. The fire grew so fast that the
00:19:15.235 --> 00:19:17.835
internal pressure exceeded the structural strength of the hull.
00:19:18.395 --> 00:19:22.695
The cabin essentially exploded outward. The hatch, even if someone had been
00:19:22.695 --> 00:19:27.015
standing by to open it, couldn't have been opened in 14 seconds under any circumstances.
00:19:28.344 --> 00:19:32.084
So why did they keep going? That's what I keep coming back to.
00:19:32.444 --> 00:19:37.764
Grissom had been complaining for months. Reports were being filed and ignored.
00:19:38.104 --> 00:19:42.824
People knew there were problems. And the program just kept going.
00:19:43.244 --> 00:19:47.604
The pressure, and I mean this both literally and figuratively, was immense.
00:19:48.164 --> 00:19:52.344
Kennedy had made his promise in 1961 before this decade is out.
00:19:52.764 --> 00:19:57.104
That was the mandate. In 1967, the decade had three years left,
00:19:57.104 --> 00:19:59.064
and the program was already behind schedule.
00:19:59.544 --> 00:20:03.024
North American Aviation, the prime contractor building the spacecraft,
00:20:03.344 --> 00:20:07.164
had its own scheduled pressures and financial incentives tied to delivery dates.
00:20:07.864 --> 00:20:12.504
So nobody wanted to be the person who said, stop. Wait a minute.
00:20:13.184 --> 00:20:17.664
The culture at the time was not one that rewarded caution.
00:20:18.184 --> 00:20:22.024
Thomas Barron, a quality control inspector at North American Aviation,
00:20:22.024 --> 00:20:26.484
and filed a comprehensive report before the fire documenting hundreds of problems
00:20:26.484 --> 00:20:28.344
he'd seen during the manufacturing process.
00:20:28.644 --> 00:20:31.724
The report was hundreds of pages long. He was fired.
00:20:31.964 --> 00:20:34.484
He died in a car accident a few
00:20:34.484 --> 00:20:38.864
months after the fire before he could just testify fully to Congress. Hmm.
00:20:39.684 --> 00:20:45.904
He filed the report, got fired, and then died before he could testify.
00:20:47.492 --> 00:20:52.892
That sentence should make everyone uncomfortable. It should. And there were others.
00:20:53.532 --> 00:20:57.032
Engineers inside NASA and at North American who had concerns,
00:20:57.032 --> 00:20:59.272
they felt unable to escalate.
00:20:59.652 --> 00:21:02.872
Not because the concerns weren't valid, because the culture said,
00:21:03.052 --> 00:21:05.012
keep moving, we're behind, we'll fix it later.
00:21:05.212 --> 00:21:08.772
And later never came for Grissom, White, and Chaffee.
00:21:09.112 --> 00:21:13.352
The congressional investigation was scathing. Post-fire review board was scathing.
00:21:13.352 --> 00:21:18.132
The phrase they used repeatedly was a failure of communication between contractors
00:21:18.132 --> 00:21:22.172
and NASA, between engineers and management, between the people who knew there
00:21:22.172 --> 00:21:25.052
were problems, and the people who needed to decide what to do about that.
00:21:25.432 --> 00:21:28.952
This is the part where I want to say something that might be uncomfortable.
00:21:29.472 --> 00:21:34.192
This wasn't an accident. An accident is something that happens despite everyone
00:21:34.192 --> 00:21:35.412
doing everything right.
00:21:36.112 --> 00:21:41.552
This was a system failure. People made choices. Choices made under pressure.
00:21:42.132 --> 00:21:46.432
Choices made with incomplete information, choices made because the alternative
00:21:46.432 --> 00:21:50.352
was slowing down, and three men died because of those choices.
00:21:50.692 --> 00:21:55.112
That's exactly right. And the distinction matters, because calling it an accident
00:21:55.112 --> 00:21:58.152
implies it couldn't have been prevented. It could have been.
00:21:58.532 --> 00:22:02.952
Multiple points in the chain of events leading to January 27th could have been interrupted.
00:22:03.292 --> 00:22:07.332
That doesn't mean any individual person is a murderer, but it means the system
00:22:07.332 --> 00:22:09.612
failed and systems are made of choices.
00:22:10.532 --> 00:22:15.332
Disasters happen to you. Tragedies are made. Where do you come up with these?
00:22:15.512 --> 00:22:17.672
English teacher. I've been workshopping that one.
00:22:18.838 --> 00:22:20.358
That's what I was doing.
00:22:22.538 --> 00:22:26.098
My delivery or the line? The line I wrote for you to say?
00:22:29.058 --> 00:22:33.078
I want to spend a few minutes on what we actually know about those final 14
00:22:33.078 --> 00:22:36.958
seconds, because I think it's important and because the crew deserves to have
00:22:36.958 --> 00:22:40.218
the record reflect what actually happened in there. Okay.
00:22:41.218 --> 00:22:46.358
First, they knew immediately. The first transmission, fire, came within moments
00:22:46.358 --> 00:22:50.318
of ignition. They were aware they were not caught unaware in their sleep or
00:22:50.318 --> 00:22:52.398
distracted by something else. They knew.
00:22:53.018 --> 00:22:57.098
Second, they tried to get out. The investigation found evidence that at least
00:22:57.098 --> 00:22:59.418
one crew member had attempted to open the hatch.
00:22:59.878 --> 00:23:03.938
The inner hatch mechanism had been partially operated. They tried.
00:23:03.938 --> 00:23:07.518
They did everything they could do in the time they had, which was not enough time.
00:23:07.738 --> 00:23:09.938
They tried. They tried.
00:23:10.338 --> 00:23:14.138
Third, the medical examiner's report, which is deeply unpleasant to read,
00:23:14.818 --> 00:23:18.458
concluded that the men died of cardiac arrest caused by smoke inhalation,
00:23:18.918 --> 00:23:23.558
meaning they lost consciousness before the worst of the fire had reached them.
00:23:23.798 --> 00:23:27.198
They did not burn to death. I want to be clear about that because it matters
00:23:27.198 --> 00:23:28.778
for their dignity and for their families.
00:23:29.298 --> 00:23:33.118
Okay, thank you for saying that. We try to be informative.
00:23:34.511 --> 00:23:39.011
Investigation took months. The review board examined over 3,000 pounds of hardware.
00:23:39.291 --> 00:23:42.451
They interviewed hundreds of witnesses. They ran tests and simulations,
00:23:42.451 --> 00:23:46.911
and their conclusions were was essentially that the fire was a result of an
00:23:46.911 --> 00:23:49.471
acclimation of deficiencies in design,
00:23:50.171 --> 00:23:54.051
manufacturing, and management and testing philosophy that they had built up
00:23:54.051 --> 00:23:57.951
over the years, and it finally became lethal. And NASA took responsibility.
00:23:58.811 --> 00:24:03.991
NASA took responsibility. Flight Director Gene Kranz, who was not on duty that
00:24:03.991 --> 00:24:07.031
day, but who became one of the most important figures in what came next,
00:24:07.311 --> 00:24:10.691
went to his team two days after the fire and delivered a speech that has since
00:24:10.691 --> 00:24:13.331
become one of the defined documents of mission control culture.
00:24:13.871 --> 00:24:20.811
He said, from this day forward, flight control will be known by two words, tough and competent.
00:24:21.311 --> 00:24:25.131
Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do.
00:24:25.751 --> 00:24:30.411
Competent means we will never take anything for granted. He then said spaceflight
00:24:30.411 --> 00:24:33.131
will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.
00:24:33.591 --> 00:24:36.831
Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design,
00:24:36.951 --> 00:24:39.231
build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it.
00:24:39.811 --> 00:24:44.611
We were too gung-ho about the schedule, and we looked at all the problems we
00:24:44.611 --> 00:24:47.051
saw each day in our work. Every one of us is guilty.
00:24:47.511 --> 00:24:52.131
He said that to his own team, two days after three astronauts died.
00:24:52.871 --> 00:24:56.491
Gene Kranz did not go looking for someone else to blame. He stood up in front
00:24:56.491 --> 00:24:58.951
of his team and said, we failed, and we will not fail again.
00:24:59.571 --> 00:25:02.811
Whether or not you think NASA were the ultimate responsibility for the fire,
00:25:03.131 --> 00:25:06.711
and I think you can make a strong argument that the contractor culture and political
00:25:06.711 --> 00:25:10.111
pressure deserves more of the blame than NASA's internal culture,
00:25:10.811 --> 00:25:14.071
Krantz's response in those days afterwards was one of the most important things
00:25:14.071 --> 00:25:16.251
that happened in the whole Apollo program.
00:25:16.611 --> 00:25:20.871
Because it set the turn for how the program was going to function going forward.
00:25:21.891 --> 00:25:26.871
Exactly. Not just grief to blame and finger pointing, accountability, and then worth.
00:25:28.435 --> 00:25:32.915
After the fire, NASA grounded all crewed missions. No one flew for 20 months.
00:25:33.135 --> 00:25:38.515
And in that time, they did something remarkable. They rebuilt the program. Not just the capsule.
00:25:38.915 --> 00:25:43.135
Not just the capsule. The capsule was redesigned from essentially the ground up.
00:25:43.455 --> 00:25:47.375
New hatch, new materials, new atmosphere protocols, new wiring standards.
00:25:47.675 --> 00:25:49.655
But the culture was also being rebuilt.
00:25:50.115 --> 00:25:52.695
The way problems were reported, the way concerns were escalated.
00:25:53.435 --> 00:25:56.195
The relationship between NASA management and the contractors.
00:25:56.695 --> 00:25:58.235
All of it went under examination.
00:25:58.835 --> 00:26:02.675
Tell me about the physical changes, the capsule specifically.
00:26:03.195 --> 00:26:07.315
Three main categories. First, the atmosphere. For ground testing,
00:26:07.455 --> 00:26:11.275
they switched from pure oxygen to a mixed nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere at normal pressure.
00:26:11.535 --> 00:26:14.195
Much harder to ignite, much safer if something sparks.
00:26:14.655 --> 00:26:18.075
In space, they maintained the pure oxygen system at low pressure,
00:26:18.255 --> 00:26:20.895
where it's significantly less dangerous.
00:26:21.315 --> 00:26:25.115
It was a compromise. Some engineers wanted to switch to mixed gas entirely,
00:26:25.335 --> 00:26:27.775
but it dramatically reduced the risk of a ground fire.
00:26:28.435 --> 00:26:33.635
Second, the hatch. The original hatch required two people in roughly 90 seconds
00:26:33.635 --> 00:26:37.775
to open, and it opened inward, meaning internal pressure held it shut.
00:26:38.055 --> 00:26:42.755
The new hatch was a unified quick-opening design that one person could open
00:26:42.755 --> 00:26:45.455
in under 10 seconds, and it opened outward.
00:26:45.755 --> 00:26:48.235
So internal pressure didn't work against it.
00:26:48.555 --> 00:26:51.115
The new hatch went through hundreds of tests.
00:26:51.595 --> 00:26:54.895
One person, 10 seconds alone, in the dark, in a pressure suit.
00:26:55.635 --> 00:27:00.655
Hmm. That's... Honestly, I can't believe the original design was approved.
00:27:00.975 --> 00:27:02.815
What was the thinking behind that?
00:27:04.219 --> 00:27:08.099
The inward-opening hatch was itself an overcorrection. After Grissom's Mercury
00:27:08.099 --> 00:27:12.319
capsule sank in 1961, the incident with the hatch blowing open,
00:27:12.579 --> 00:27:16.339
NASA became very worried about explosive hatches opening accidentally in space.
00:27:16.599 --> 00:27:19.999
So they designed one that was much harder to open unintentionally.
00:27:20.179 --> 00:27:23.819
In doing so, they created one that was impossible to open in an emergency.
00:27:24.119 --> 00:27:28.399
They solved the problem of hatches that open when they shouldn't by creating
00:27:28.399 --> 00:27:31.939
hatches that don't open when they should. Great.
00:27:32.579 --> 00:27:35.299
That is precisely the engineering tragedy at the heart of it.
00:27:35.499 --> 00:27:37.039
And the third category, materials.
00:27:38.039 --> 00:27:41.239
Investigation found approximately 70 pounds of combustible material in the original
00:27:41.239 --> 00:27:45.419
cabin. The redesigned cabin used fire-resistant materials whenever possible.
00:27:45.859 --> 00:27:50.079
Velcro was replaced or significantly reduced. Wiring was rerouted,
00:27:50.279 --> 00:27:55.199
insulated, inspected with a new level of rigor, and the new capsule had roughly
00:27:55.199 --> 00:27:57.239
a third of the flammable content of the original.
00:27:57.479 --> 00:27:59.999
And it worked. The redesigned worked.
00:28:00.599 --> 00:28:05.979
It worked. The hatch redesign in particular proved its value in a way nobody wanted to have proved.
00:28:06.259 --> 00:28:10.839
When Apollo 13 had his accident in 1970 and the crew needed to move quickly
00:28:10.839 --> 00:28:14.739
between the command module and the lunar module in an emergency in a crippled
00:28:14.739 --> 00:28:18.259
spacecraft, they could do it. The hatch is open in seconds.
00:28:18.699 --> 00:28:23.459
That's a direct line from the deaths of Grissom, White, and Chafee to the survival
00:28:23.459 --> 00:28:25.359
of Lover, Swaggart, and Hayes. It's terrible.
00:28:25.519 --> 00:28:31.579
It's true. The fire that killed three men led directly to a design that saved three others.
00:28:31.939 --> 00:28:36.379
Which you'll be hearing about in four episodes from now, maybe. Maybe five. Right.
00:28:38.499 --> 00:28:41.819
That's the thing that makes this story so hard to carry. Something real and
00:28:41.819 --> 00:28:44.039
good came from something terrible and preventable.
00:28:44.299 --> 00:28:47.759
Which so often that's how it happens.
00:28:48.299 --> 00:28:52.679
The fact that good came after doesn't justify the terrible. But it happened
00:28:52.679 --> 00:28:53.979
and you have to hold both sinks.
00:28:54.759 --> 00:28:58.279
I want to talk about the families because I keep coming back to them.
00:28:58.539 --> 00:29:02.139
Betty Grissom, Pat White, Martha Chaffee. What happened to them?
00:29:02.259 --> 00:29:05.299
How did they navigate? What came after? How could you ever?
00:29:06.259 --> 00:29:10.299
Betty Grissom was remarkably direct in her response. She sued North American
00:29:10.299 --> 00:29:13.539
Aviation, the prime contractor, for negligence, settled out of court.
00:29:14.099 --> 00:29:18.819
The amount was reportedly around $350,000, which in 1969 dollars was meaningful,
00:29:19.199 --> 00:29:22.219
but not enormous for the death of the most experienced astronaut in the program.
00:29:22.679 --> 00:29:25.919
She was one of the first astronaut widows to take legal action,
00:29:26.179 --> 00:29:29.859
and NASA's institutional culture at the time found it deeply uncomfortable.
00:29:30.559 --> 00:29:35.319
The unspoken expectation was that astronaut families would grieve quietly and
00:29:35.319 --> 00:29:36.599
publicly support the program.
00:29:36.959 --> 00:29:39.379
Betty Crissom did not do that. Good for her.
00:29:40.615 --> 00:29:45.275
Pat White, Ed's wife, had a much harder path. She struggled enormously in the
00:29:45.275 --> 00:29:47.875
years after the fire. She remarried. She died in 1983.
00:29:48.375 --> 00:29:52.955
The official cause was listed as suicide, though her family has questioned the
00:29:52.955 --> 00:29:54.195
circumstances over the years.
00:29:54.395 --> 00:29:59.215
Her son, Ed White III, graduated from West Point like his father and has spent
00:29:59.215 --> 00:30:05.275
much of his adult life working to honor his father's memory and legacy. What about Martha?
00:30:06.035 --> 00:30:10.695
Martha Chafee raised her two children and largely stayed out of the public side.
00:30:10.895 --> 00:30:14.995
Roger's son, Stephen, later said that his father was the forgotten one of the
00:30:14.995 --> 00:30:16.835
three, that Grisham was the senior figure.
00:30:17.375 --> 00:30:20.995
White was the photogenic spacewalker, and Roger was the young one who hadn't
00:30:20.995 --> 00:30:23.215
yet done anything famous enough to be remembered.
00:30:23.615 --> 00:30:26.195
Stephen spent years trying to remember, trying to change that.
00:30:26.715 --> 00:30:30.795
These families, the people left behind by history-making events,
00:30:30.955 --> 00:30:37.155
who then just have to live their regular lives. I find that so heavy to think about.
00:30:37.775 --> 00:30:41.695
It's one of those things that gets overlooked when we talk about the cost of the space program.
00:30:42.035 --> 00:30:47.955
The direct cost is 12 lives. Three on Apollo 1, seven on Challengers, seven on Columbia.
00:30:48.435 --> 00:30:52.975
The indirect cost is all the people who love them. I want to talk about legacy.
00:30:53.335 --> 00:30:56.535
Not just the engineering legacy, which Dan has covered thoroughly,
00:30:56.735 --> 00:31:01.095
but what Apollo 1 meant for how America understood the space program.
00:31:01.095 --> 00:31:02.995
Because I think something shifted
00:31:02.995 --> 00:31:08.495
on January 27th, 1967 that doesn't get talked enough about. Go ahead.
00:31:08.915 --> 00:31:14.375
Before Apollo 1, the astronauts had been presented to the public and had been
00:31:14.375 --> 00:31:18.275
to a large extent received as kind of a secular mythology.
00:31:18.615 --> 00:31:23.515
These perfect specimens, prude cuts, white teeth, firm handshakes,
00:31:23.675 --> 00:31:25.275
beautiful wives, wholesome families.
00:31:25.615 --> 00:31:30.255
These men were not just test pilots. They were symbols. They represented American
00:31:30.255 --> 00:31:36.935
greatness and technological supremacy and the inevitability of our winning the
00:31:36.935 --> 00:31:38.415
Cold War. Keep going. Yeah.
00:31:39.310 --> 00:31:43.810
Astronaut as American hero was one of the defining cultural constructions of the early 1960s.
00:31:44.190 --> 00:31:50.330
And then on a Friday afternoon in January 1967, three of them died in a routine
00:31:50.330 --> 00:31:56.510
ground test, not in space, not heroically, and erratically maybe,
00:31:57.210 --> 00:32:02.650
hurtling towards the moon at 17,000 miles per hour, on a launch pad,
00:32:02.950 --> 00:32:06.350
in front of the support crew, in less than 30 seconds.
00:32:06.630 --> 00:32:11.430
And I think that broke something in the public understanding of what was actually happening here.
00:32:11.690 --> 00:32:15.570
The polls showed a significant drop in public support for the space program
00:32:15.570 --> 00:32:17.030
in the months after the fire.
00:32:17.270 --> 00:32:20.510
The congressional investigation was uncomfortable and pointed.
00:32:21.702 --> 00:32:23.922
Were serious questions about whether it should continue at all.
00:32:24.202 --> 00:32:28.802
And here where I want to be careful, because I think there's a narrative that
00:32:28.802 --> 00:32:32.742
gets told about Apollo 1 that I find slightly dishonest.
00:32:32.902 --> 00:32:38.642
The narrative is, the fire was a terrible tragedy, but it made Apollo 11 possible.
00:32:39.242 --> 00:32:44.442
Grissom, White, and Chaffee didn't die in vain. And that narrative is not wrong, exactly.
00:32:44.722 --> 00:32:49.762
The redesign was real, the culture change was real, and the new hatch saved lives.
00:32:49.902 --> 00:32:54.562
All of that is true. But I don't want it to become a way of tidying up the grief
00:32:54.562 --> 00:32:59.062
into something useful, of converting loss into lessen and moving on.
00:32:59.462 --> 00:33:03.082
Because Grissom, White, and Chaffee didn't choose to die for the program,
00:33:03.202 --> 00:33:05.842
they were killed by a preventable failure.
00:33:06.082 --> 00:33:11.862
The fact that something good came afterward is not the same as saying it had to happen this way.
00:33:12.282 --> 00:33:16.362
It didn't have to happen this way. It should not have happened this way.
00:33:16.362 --> 00:33:21.282
I think that's exactly right. And I think it's a more honest way to honor them
00:33:21.282 --> 00:33:25.922
than the they didn't die in vain formulation, which can slip into something
00:33:25.922 --> 00:33:27.622
almost comfortable if you're not careful.
00:33:27.982 --> 00:33:32.562
Okay, I have one last question before we close. It's been on my mind since the beginning.
00:33:32.722 --> 00:33:36.562
Did Grissom know he was openly unhappy with this spacecraft?
00:33:37.002 --> 00:33:40.922
He was filing complaints. He was carrying around literal lemons.
00:33:41.222 --> 00:33:45.842
Do you think on some level he understood that something might go catastrophically wrong?
00:33:46.362 --> 00:33:50.422
There's a quote from him. He gave an interview a few months before he died,
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not specifically about Apollo 1, just a general interview about the space program and its risks.
00:33:56.922 --> 00:34:00.502
He said, if we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business.
00:34:00.922 --> 00:34:04.122
And we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program.
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The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.
00:34:08.199 --> 00:34:13.859
Said that. He said that, whether it was for a specific premonition or just the
00:34:13.859 --> 00:34:19.499
pragmatism of a man who'd spent his career in experimental aircraft where people died regularly.
00:34:20.039 --> 00:34:22.879
And you had to make peace with that. I genuinely don't know.
00:34:23.259 --> 00:34:26.879
But Gus Grissom understood what he'd signed up for. He understood it with a
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clarity that's almost unbearable to read now.
00:34:29.819 --> 00:34:31.879
That doesn't make it any less tragic.
00:34:33.299 --> 00:34:36.219
No, it doesn't make it less tragic. It doesn't make it okay.
00:34:36.219 --> 00:34:41.879
It doesn't justify the shortcuts or the schedule pressure or the wiring that should have been fixed.
00:34:42.239 --> 00:34:46.119
It just means he was a man who went in with his eyes open and the program owed
00:34:46.119 --> 00:34:47.219
him better than it gave him.
00:34:48.979 --> 00:34:53.579
Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, January 27, 1967.
00:34:54.379 --> 00:34:58.759
They were 37 years old, 36 years old, and 31 years old.
00:34:58.859 --> 00:35:03.439
They went to work on a Friday afternoon to run a routine test on a spacecraft
00:35:03.439 --> 00:35:05.219
that they were going to take to the moon.
00:35:05.379 --> 00:35:07.519
They were not supposed to die that day.
00:35:08.139 --> 00:35:12.859
In some ways, in the redesigned hatch, in the new atmosphere protocols,
00:35:13.159 --> 00:35:18.299
in the culture that Gene Krantz built from the ashes of what went wrong, they got something.
00:35:18.979 --> 00:35:22.939
Something real and lasting came from what happened to them. But they deserve
00:35:22.939 --> 00:35:25.539
better first. The program owed them better.
00:35:25.799 --> 00:35:29.979
And I think the least we can do 50-some years later is say that clearly.
00:35:30.659 --> 00:35:35.799
There's a memorial at Cape Canaveral at Launch Pad 34. The pad is decommissioned.
00:35:35.899 --> 00:35:39.459
The gantry is gone. It's just a concrete expanse now with a small plaque.
00:35:39.739 --> 00:35:43.899
The plaque reads, They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing
00:35:43.899 --> 00:35:46.059
exploration of humankind's final frontier.
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Remember them not for how they died, but for those ideals for which they lived.
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I'm not crying. You're a little crying. Okay, I'm a little crying.
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Okay, next episode, Apollo 8.
00:35:57.504 --> 00:36:03.304
And promises it's an uplifting story, which I need more now than I can express after this one.
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It's uplifting. It happens on Christmas Eve 1968, and it involves a photograph
00:36:08.224 --> 00:36:13.564
that might be the most consequential single image in the history of the environmental movement.
00:36:13.804 --> 00:36:16.724
It's a genuinely beautiful story. I'll be there.
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Thanks for listening to Time Tellers, everyone.
00:36:20.564 --> 00:36:22.524
If this episode moved you, leave
00:36:22.524 --> 00:36:27.064
us a review. Tell somebody about Roger Chaffee, the youngest of three.
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The one people often forget. He was 31 years old and he never got to fly.
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He deserves to be remembered. Keep asking questions. And keep looking up. Bye.