On this day in 1967, three astronauts participating in NASA's Apollo 1 mission died in a fire on the launch pad during a rehearsal launch. Astronauts Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, and Ed White were the first Americans to die in a spacecraft. The accident was seen as having been largely preventable and caused by a workplace culture that favored mission progress over basic safety precautions and would lead to a much more cautious approach by the U.S. moving forward.
From the start, some of the astronauts felt the Apollo 1 capsule's design was dangerous. It was intended solely for Earth-orbital flights, a steppingstone on the way to landing on the moon, but it came with dozens of unresolved technical problems and deficient hardware and software. At blame was the main contractor working on the project, North American Aviation, which was seen by critics as producing shoddy work with weak safety standards.
When the crew boarded the Apollo 1 capsule for the test, one of them caught a whiff of an odor that was abnormal. The instruments didn't indicate any problem, so the mission proceeded. Once they were in and the door was locked, the cabin was filled with oxygen which, by itself, is extremely flammable. A frayed cable created a spark, and camera feeds in the control room began to show bright light emanating from the capsule.
The three were desperately trying to escape, but the capsule's unwieldy hatch and the air pressure imbalance generated by the fire stopped them from getting out in time. The three were asphyxiated. Horrifyingly, their final words, and screams, were all heard live by their colleagues.
The deadly fire led to public outcry and subsequent reforms. Changes were made to the next ships' cabins, flammables like nylon nets removed, the oxygen replaced with a less flammable mixture, and a new hatch installed that was more easily opened in an emergency.
You can learn more about the fire at Astronomy.com.
