The exhibit, called Ad Astra Per Astera: A Rough Road Leads to the Stars, opened yesterday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In addition to displaying personal effects of the three astronauts, the exhibit also contains the three-section hatch from the doomed capsule. This is the first time the hatch has been seen in public since the deadly fire.
Also included in the exhibit was a hatch designed after the Apollo 1 tragedy. Unlike the previous design, this one can be opened in five seconds. The hatch on the original space capsules took 90 seconds to open, time the three astronauts did not have.
Michael Curie, a spokesman for the Kennedy Space Center, said, “The redesigned hatch, various mementos depicting the lives of the crew and displays show how the tragedy was overcome and helped us achieve the goal of landing on the moon.”
On Jan. 27, 1967, Grissom, White and Chaffee were sitting in the Apollo 1 capsule atop a booster rocket doing a pre-flight check. They were suited-up and sealed into the capsule as if they were going to launch. The astronauts experienced difficulty in communicating with the ground crew and one of the astronauts reported a strange odour seeping into his spacesuit.
The crew spent all afternoon attempting to solve these problems when the capsule became engulfed in flames. The cause of the fire was later determined to be a spark that emanated from a group of wires. The heat resulted in pressure in the capsule rising such that the hatches, that opened inward, could not be opened. The astronauts did not have time to open the hatches as the air inside the capsule was pure oxygen. The men died before a rescue could even be attempted and it was estimated the astronauts died within a minute of the fire starting.
Grissom, 40, was one of the original Mercury astronauts and the second American to fly in space. Grissom made a sub-orbital flight following Alan Shepard’s launch and his flight preceded John Glenn’s historic mission as the first American to orbit the Earth.
Ed White, 36, piloted the Gemini 4 mission in June 1965 and became the first American to walk in space. Roger Chaffee, 31, was a rookie astronaut was to make his first spaceflight the following month when Apollo 1 was scheduled to launch.
Because the accident occurred on the ground rather than in space, the exact cause of the fire was able to be determined and this led to several changes apart from the hatches. The pure oxygen in the capsule was changed to a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen to make it less flammable.
Astronaut Mike Collins, who commanded the Apollo 11 capsule that orbited the moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface, credits what was learned from the Apollo 1 fire in making subsequent flights and moon landings successful. He noted the three men did not in vain.
Ironically, the other two space tragedies involving losses of life happened around the same time of year. On January 28, 1986, the Challenger space shuttle blew up 73 seconds after liftoff. And on Feb. 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke up as it was re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Seven astronauts were killed in each shuttle disaster. Every year around this time, NASA commemorates the deaths of the astronauts killed in all three accidents.
