On January 27, 1967 — 40 years ago today — a fire swept through the Apollo 1 capsule during a test, killing all three astronauts.
Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus Grissom didn’t have a chance. 17 seconds after the first yell of "fire!", they were dead.
A series of events and circumstances lead to the fire. Perhaps the most famous is the pure oxygen atmosphere used in the capsule during the test. Why did NASA do that? The capsule was designed to use a pure O2 atmosphere while in space. Our air on Earth is a mix of nitrogen and oxygen, but this is difficult to use in space. The capsule needed to be as lightweight as possible (to save on fuel), so using a lower cabin pressure (5 pounds/square inch instead of 15 as on the surface of the Earth) means less weight, and less need for structural strength in the capsule. However, at lower pressure nitrogen can form bubbles in the blood, causing the condition known as "the bends", which can be crippling or fatal. So, at lower cabin pressure, there cannot be nitrogen in the air. Another gas could be substituted (like helium, which does not bubble in the blood) but that only works at higher pressure. The air has to have a certain amount of oxygen in it for the human body to survive, and at lower pressure that means essentially 100% of the air must be O2.
The danger of a fire is very real in space, but the lower pressure and lack of gravity (which means no convection; hot air cannot rise) makes a fire danger with pure O2 in space is no worse than it is on Earth with our air.
But that means the equipment on board that supplies the air can only handle pure oxygen, which in turn means that on the ground they needed to test with pure oxygen. The big difference is, on the ground the pressure is Earth-normal: 15 psi. At this pressure, fire danger is much higher.
A spark is what caused the fire. In the pure O2, it swept rapidly through the capsule. The hatch in the capsule that led outside was designed to open inward, to prevent it from being blown accidentally (which had happened in a real flight in 1961– ironically, Grissom’s Liberty Bell Mercury flight). It had a complicated set of procedures to open, and the astronauts couldn’t get it unlatched in time.
And so they died.
But I’ll take this opportunity to make a point. People die. When they push back frontiers, when they explore, when they stand on the vanguard of what is known and what isn’t, the chances of catastrophe are higher. The best we can do is try as hard as we can to minimize those risks. Of course, the way to make risks absolutely minimized is to go nowhere, do nothing.
That is unacceptable. Ships are safest in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.
NASA, along with a handful of agencies for other countries, want to go back to the Moon. I stand behind this decision. At some point, in some way, we will lose more people. This is inevitable, but it does not mean we should not go.
So remember the names of Grissom, White, Chaffee…
… and Komarov…
… and Dobrovolski, Patsayev, Volkov…
… and Scobee, Smith, McAuliffe, Onizuka, Resnick, McNair, Jarvis…
… and Brown, Husband, Clark, Chawla, Anderson, McCool, Ramon …
This list will not end. But there are billions of us, billions, whose names are not on this list, yet our lives have been changed forever due to the ones who are.
Per ardua ad astra.
January 27th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Personally, I’m amazed at how safe space travel actually has been. When you take a look at how ridiculously difficult and dangerous it is to not only go in space, but land on the moon, the small number of fatalities is evidence of how well we’re doing. For instance, of the entire Apollo program, only Apollo 1 and Apollo 13 had serious problems, and of those, only Apollo 1 resulted in deaths – but not even in space. For what we’re doing, that safety record is something to be proud of.
January 27th, 2007 at 11:15 am
I answer for Ezra Dahlquist.
January 27th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Great post, but you forgot Komarov of Soyuz 1.
January 27th, 2007 at 11:33 am
jokermage, right. I added it. Thanks.
January 27th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Plus you forget those killed on the ground in some of the early Soviet attempts.
January 27th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Always wondered about the need for pure 02. Thank you for the straight forward explanation. If they had had the pressure at only 5 psi on the ground, would it have potentially damaged the capsule? ie, implosion?
Striving for excellence, pushing back any boundry requires risk. Inspiring post.
January 27th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
For your enjoyment, a frame I shot last year while at KSC:
http://journalpix.com/heroes.jpg
January 27th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Sticks, he could just link to the Space Program Fatalities Category on Wikipedia.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I was 10 years old and a huge spaceflight fan when this occurred. I can clearly remember the CBS Evening News report announcing the tragedy. Of course I knew who Grissom and White were, having devoured every scrap of information about them and their flights that I could find. To such a young kid, unaccustomed to death, this was a big shock. Instantly, this was no longer like the science fiction worlds of Star Trek etc.; our heroes had died. I managed to hide the shock at the time, but to this day, I remember the day like few others. It is normally a private personal commemoration, but it’s nice to be able to share it this time.
An interesting observation from that time – I remember the wait between the fire and Apollo 7 as being like forever, yet it was only about 21 months. If only time ran so slowly as a 50-year-old!
January 27th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
The Apollo fire was January 27th? Geez… tomorrow’s the 21st anniversary of the Challenger disaster. Two terrible days, side by side :/
January 27th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
As a friend once wrote, talking about the death of another pilot:
One cannot live a worthwhile life if you live in constant fear of death.
We all must take our risks, for those who take no risks are already dead.
For those who take too great a risk, we can do no more than to honor their
memories and seek to learn from their mistakes.
January 27th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
And Amen.
I was too young to remember this event, but the 28th I will always remember.
It was worth the trip out to KSC to see the memorial; my wife and I couldn’t hold back the tears, seeing the names of our heroes with the sky reflected behind them.
(For those who don’t know, I’m a “NASA brat” – grew up with both parents working at JSC, and I went to school with a lot of the other children of folks working both at JSC and who trained and flew in space.)
January 27th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I was too young to remember the Apollo 1 fire, but I’ll never forget where I was on Jan 28th 1986. — Or listening to the radio after the Columbia disaster.
I do remember proudly building the Saturn V Rocket my Dad bought me, years ago. And building a model of the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
I also remember being thrilled at the “America’s Return To Flight” and printing up a one of a kind T-Shirt stating ‘We’re Back’, When Discovery Launched following the ‘86 explosion. You’re right sadly.
January 27th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I remember this one clearly – I was thirteen and space-crazy. I was afraid we’d never go back, never try again, but we did. There was, it seemed to me, more talk after Challenger about “why keep on?” than after Apollo 1, but that could just be the difference in my perspectives. Regardless, it’s true: it’s dangerous, but so is crossing the ocean – or the desert or the praries or the mountains. We get nowhere if we don’t go.
January 27th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia, I think all these tragedies were preventable. Apollo 1 was trying to go too fast, Challenger and Columbia the engineers decided to think happy thoughts instead of a proper reality check. I know when I make mistakes at my job most of the time I had a bad feeling before it happened. That’s not to say that something hideous couldn’t happen that would be completely stochastic such as an impact in orbit but for now everything boils down to human error. I’d say the ratio is about what Sun Tzu gave for war about 1 loss per 100 victories if you know your own capabilities and what you’re dealing with. (That is in regard to the nature of mistakes 1 in 100 will result from unavoidable circumstances.)
Hopefully future Shuttle systems will learn what not to do from the present shuttle. There’s a lot that isn’t good.
January 27th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
“Ships are safest in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”
I know this from personal experience.
Wonderful post, Phil. And quite informative.
While risks in exploration can not be eliminated, what we can do is learn from the past, and endevour to minimize them. That’s about all we can do.
Risk is part of life, and space exploration is not different. As tragic as the deaths of those have been, it would be far worse to dishonor their memories by simply giving up. We must push on.
January 27th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
[...] Thanks to Dr. Phil Plait for reminding me of the anniversary of this tragic event. [...]
January 27th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Oh, I do remember this. I was 12 and headed to visit my aunt and uncle when the story came on the radio. That was the first time I realized that astronauts weren’t invincible…. but it didn’t quench my interest in space exploration.
January 27th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Thank you for taking the time to remember an important event in our history. I also thank you for taking the opportunity to remember the Challenger and Columbia crews as well, as well as the Russian cosmonauts that lost their lives. I am a high school teacher and I am always amazed at how little my students know about significant events in recent history (and yes, Apollo 1 is recent). We all need to reflect on our history to understand why we have the lives we do.
January 27th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Bravo BA, Bravo.
January 27th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I’m too young to remember Apollo I, it was before my time. But I do remember Challenger quite well. I was in grade school and was one of the countless little kids that watched the tragedy happen live, on a TV at school. It was tragic for all of us that day…it’s one we’ll never forget. And when Columbia happened a few years back I felt like “Oh, no not again!”
So here’s to Apollo I, Challenger, Columbia, and the fallen Cosmonauts. Thanks to you we have the world of space exploration that we do. Thank you. And thanks BA for reminding us all about what is important for us to remember on Sat. (Apollo I), Sun. (Challenger), and Thurs. (Columbia). Truly a solemn, but poinant week for space enthusiasts.
January 27th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Thanks for the nice explanation of the genesis of the O2 design concept.
I grew up in Grand Rapids, MI, Roger Chaffee’s hometown. So I grew up attending many star shows at the Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium in the Grand Rapids Public Museum. It’s over 20 years since I’ve been there, but I could draw the layout of astronomy section of the museum from memory and describe many of the exhibits as well. It was there that my fascination with astronomy took root.
What’s especially painful about the loss of astronauts in the course of space exploration is that we lose some of the finest individuals the planet has to offer. The talent, the expertise, the skill, the wisdom, and the poise of these people is extraordinarily rare.
So I have no patience for insults that pass as pranks or email chain-hoaxes like the “Columbia explosion photos from space” as debunked here.
January 27th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Great post,
Just a little nit-pick, that there is gravity in space, and the 8 km/sec orbital velocity just makes it look like they are floating, when they are actually falling through space (as a unit). I know you know this, I just hope this technical detail makes it to popular culture one day. I hope that the more technical details that people are exposed to, the more people will see how complicated and suffuse the universe is.
January 27th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Very very very stirring. I might print that out and hang it in my classroom. Thanks Phil. Well done.
January 28th, 2007 at 12:30 am
jasonB Says: “Always wondered about the need for pure 02. If they had had the pressure at only 5 psi on the ground, would it have potentially damaged the capsule? i.e., implosion”
Phil’s explanation was basically correct, but a little glossed over (which was appropriate for the post, I’d say). The reason a single gas system is so much lighter than two-gas isn’t the mass of the gasses themselves, but the equipment you have to bring along to manage them. There are two complete sets of tanks, valves, regulators and other associated plumbing, plus some sort of management system to make sure they are in the proper ratios, etc. On top of that, with a one-atmosphere system you are sealing all of the windows and hatches against roughly 760 mmHg pressure whereas with a pure O2 system it’s only about 250 mmHg.
One thing he didn’t get quite right is the risk of the bends. Nitrogen will only boil in the blood if the blood is saturated and then you are exposed to suddenly reduced pressure. These conditions only happen if you breath air at pressures above two atmospheres (e.g. under water below 32 feet/10 meters deep) and then suddenly surface. Nitrogen will not saturate in the blood at one atmosphere, and even if it did, being exposed to a one-atmosphere drop would cause other problems. The bends would be the least of your worries in that situation
Finally, the Apollo capsule would have no trouble dealing structurally with a 2/3 atmosphere differential. The problem is that the seals would be stressed the wrong direction. In space the interior pressure would be 250 mmHg above the outside, so that’s what they simulated by pumping up the cabin to almost 1,000 mmHg pure oxygen. At that pressure, the greatest biological risk is oxygen poisoning since the gas exchange in the lungs can’t get rid of the CO2 with that much O2 trying to force its way in.
- Jack
January 28th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Clarifying my previous post, I should mention that the risk of the bends is not completely zero at one atmosphere. The shuttle has a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere at close to sea level pressure because it requires less adaptation for the crew when going up or down. The EVA suits, though, are 5 PSI (250 mmHg) oxygen, and before going outside, the crew members spend a couple of hours pre-breathing low pressure O2 (while inside the tiny airlock) to make sure they’ve completely purged their system. They use the lower pressure because 1) it’s easier to seal, and 2) it makes the suit a lot less stiff since it’s not blown up like a balloon.
- Jack
January 28th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Spook Says: ‘The Apollo fire was January 27th? Geez… tomorrow’s the 21st anniversary of the Challenger disaster. Two terrible days, side by side”
Not to mention the Columbia loss on February 1. All of NASA’s loss-of-life accidents (while actually in a spacecraft) have happened in this one tragic week.
- Jack
January 28th, 2007 at 8:10 am
I was particularly affected by the news of the Apollo 1 fire, and especially the loss of the crew who were inside doing tests and training. The name of one of the crew, Roger Chaffee, was immediately familar, even though he was the rookie. Ed and Gus had both featured in previous flights with their photos and articles in various magazines, including ‘Popular Science’.
Roger was more familar to me because I had had a pen-pal in the early 1950s, part of our teacher’s attempt to widen our horizons way back then, and I had written to someone by that name. Don’t recall how he was chosen, but I wrote to him, sadly only once I think, but I do remember that he had lived in, or near the town of Pittsfield, Ma. His letter to me I would have kept, but 50 odd years later, and many moves since, I shall just have to wait till it turns up.
What’s this to do with the Apollo 1 fire? Well I have not been able to establish that it MAY have been the same person, similar age, and my feeling, having the same interests, and that he may have moved to Michigan, while still in grade school, and later, high school etc., and is now claimed by Michigan. (Nothing against that though.)
Does anybody know? I also believe there is a Chaffee daughter working in the Space Industry, maybe around the Cape.
I do realise that at the time in a population of 200 million, there may have been hundreds with the very same name, and similar age. I’d be intrigued to find out though.
And to Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee – R.I.P.
Thanks Phil for the timely Memorial.
Ivan.
January 28th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Jack
Thank you for the great breakdown on that. I used to SCUBA dive so the nitrogen thing made sense. Just recreational. I never made it to the really deep dives and mixed gasses. I appreciate the education.
Jason
January 28th, 2007 at 9:53 am
“helium, which does not bubble in the blood”
Helium bubbles far more than nitrogen when off gassing as it goes in and out of solution far quicker. The bends are most commonly associated with diving, when diving with helium in the gas mix it is important that the decompression is both more careful and longer than diving with a mix of nitrogen and oxygen (i.e. air or nitrox)
January 28th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Hmmm, OK. I deleted out that comment about helium, but for some reason the server won’t let me actually correct the comment. We have some overzealous security that I cannot seem to override.
January 28th, 2007 at 11:43 am
To the names Grissom, White, Chaffee…… and Komarov…… and Dobrovolski, Patsayev, Volkov…… and Scobee, Smith, McAuliffe, Onizuka, Resnick, McNair, Jarvis…… and Brown, Husband, Clark, Chawla, Anderson, McCool, Ramon … we might well add those nameless thousands who died on the prairies and mountains of the American west; those who perished at sea traveling from Europe to the Americas, and even the neolithic “Ice man” whose body was preserved in the mountain pass he was exploring. As a species, we have always been willing to take risks to find out what was on the other side of our temporary barriers.
January 28th, 2007 at 11:50 am
“…the lower pressure and lack of gravity (which means no convection; hot air cannot rise) makes a fire danger with pure O2 in space is no worse than it is on Earth with our air.”
This is what I don’t understand. Does pure O2 under less pressure have lesser volatility, such that it’s no worse than nitrogen and oxygen in air? Or am I missing something?
January 28th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Ivan (icemith),
Roger Bruce Chaffee was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Wiki on Roger B. Chaffee.
Wiki on The Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium.
January 28th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Does pure O2 under less pressure have lesser volatility, such that it’s no worse than nitrogen and oxygen in air?
Libarts:
Short answer is yes. The more science-savvy can give details, but the Apollo 1 inquiries indicated that O2 at 15 psi or so renndered the velcro and other materials in the spacecraft not merely more flammable, but genuinely explosive. The HBO series FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON had an excellent dramatization of this inquiry.
January 28th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
It’s a real shame they didn’t listen to what the air force told them. Quite sad but they know their jobs were dangerous.
January 28th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
I know that this is a common typo Phil, but you spelled Dr. Judith A. Resnik’s last name with a “c” in it as “Resnick”. Just thought I’d point it out.
January 28th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Hmmm. I cut and pasted it from a NASA site. I hesitate to fix it now, since it’s been a day, and when make changes everyone gets the new version sent out to them. RSS is a pain that way.
January 28th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Thanks Phil…It doesn’t seem that long ago. Forty years… Thinking about Gus Grissom brings back so many memories. As a mid-teenager, my room was a space museum. I frequently corresponded with each of the NASA’s around the US, including Lewis here in Ohio. I had 8×10’s of the original 7, and charts and maps and a globe with all the receiving stations marked with thumbtacks (still have it!). And all the info I could find about Perth. Remember the good folks of Perth? Gus was always my favorite astronaut, and I’ve never seen anything to change that. Deke Slayton says that, had he lived, Gus would have been the first to set foot on the moon. I don’t have many heroes, but numbered among those few is Gus Grissom.
January 28th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
“If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”
Virgil I. Grissom, after the Gemini 3 mission, March 1965
January 28th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I wasn’t even alive when Apollo 1 met its tragic fate, but as a child obsessed with the entire astronaut history, I remember my father telling me the story. I was horrified and could not understand why they could’ve let something like that happen.
I do remember getting out of the orthodontist and riding with my mom to go pick up a friend from his mother’s work on Jan 28, 1986. We were out of school that day and I don’t remember why. He came running out of his mother’s office all frantic. We rushed back to my house; I didn’t believe him when he told me.
I said it then and I’ll say it now, if I had been in that line of work when these tragedies occurred, I would’ve been on the next Apollo rocket or shuttle out of our atmosphere.
More comes out of our astronomy and space exploration research than people know and more than some people will admit.
January 28th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
My mother’s birthday is the 28th of January. Having grown up in a house with space junkies, my mother being one of the best, it didn’t occur to me until I read this article why she commented on Saturday that “so many terrible things have happened around my birthday”. But of course, she cries with me each time we watch Apollo 1 go up in flames on From the Earth to the Moon, when we remember my first day of school (Southern Hemisphere begins the school year in January) in Grade 5 and waking up to the news and footage of Challenger and again, calling her from a hotel in Michigan to commiserate with her over Columbia.
And still she and I believe that the exploration of space is the single most important thing for mankind to be pursuing, despite our human frailties.
January 29th, 2007 at 3:19 am
I am now a bit confused about the oxygen issue. Did they use 100% oxygen at normal atmospheric pressure just before the accident? As far as I know, 100% oxygen is quite thoroughly poisonous at such pressure.
On the other hand, if the pressure in the cabin was about the same as the partial pressure of oxygen in our atmosphere, then I have to wonder whether pure oxygen would be any better at sustaining a fire than it is in normal atmospheric air?
Anyone in the know?
As a matter of interest, the reason why deep divers use a helium/oxygen mixture in their tanks instead of normal air, is that when breathing normal air at high pressure, a condition known as nitrogen narcosis sets in. The symptoms are similar to those of alcohol intoxication. Such divers also use a mixture with only about 5% – 10% oxygen, because at high pressure, 20% oxygen becomes every bit as toxic as 100% oxygen at normal pressure.
More detailed information available here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimix
January 29th, 2007 at 5:40 am
Brian
All effects of gas on the human body relate to the partial pressure not the fraction of the gas.
100% O2 at normal atmospheric pressure gives a partial pressure of 1bar (sorry don’t do psi). This is toxic but not immediately so to a dangerous level so saying it is “quite thoroughly poisonous” is over stating the case a little. Anything over 0.5bar for a sustained period will eventually cause problems, this is know as whole body toxicity or Central Nervous System (CNS) toxicity, high partial pressures of oxygen (high ppO2) cause a different kind of toxicity known as actuate toxicity, this causes fits which of themselves are not particularly dangerous but would normally be fatal underwater as it would usually result in the loss of the regulator. The point where this is likely varies somewhat but keeping below 1.3-1.4 bar ppO2 would normally keep you safe for reasonable length dives
Trimix divers (I am one) have to balance a number of issues. Oxygen toxicity, the narcotic effect of nitrogen and high decompression penalty of helium. In general terms you would normally pick a gas mix to give you about 1.3bar ppO2, 3.0-3.5bar ppN2 and the rest helium.
Pete
January 29th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Thanks Dean (Baird) for your response re Roger B. Chaffee. I had relatively recently been informed (by a friend from Michigan who paid us a visit last Sept.) that he was indeed claimed by Michigan, but I had reservations, because I could not rule out the MA connection that I had known, however slightly.
But as I indicated, there was likely to have been many with the same name, and I am unaware of a second initial, I certainly cannot recall that anyway.
The other significant thing was that in Geography at school at about the same time, we learnt about the Chaffee Brothers who came from “America”, presumably the US, to kick start big Irrigation schemes on the Murray River – Murrumbidgee River areas about the turn of the 20th Century, (I think).
So you can see that the name was important to me, at least then as a kid, to have remembered it.
Thanks Dean for your interest.
Ivan.
January 30th, 2007 at 3:28 am
PeteM:
Thanks for that extra information. I don’t think we really disagree on anything (except that oxygen is apparently not quite as toxic as I thought!). I am aware of the issue with partial pressure. In the atmosphere at normal pressure, the partial pressure of oxygen would be about 0.2 bar? So in normal air at five atmospheres, it would be about 1 bar, and breathing normal air at that pressure would then physiologically be about the same thing as breathing 100% oxygen at normal atmospheric pressure. Which is not as toxic as I thought, but is probably not to be recommended as a long term strategy for survival.
Anyway, I would agree that the chemical or physiological effect of a gas would depend not just on what fraction of a mixture it forms, but also on pressure.
A common, simple test to see whether a gas is oxygen is to hold a smoldering bit of stick or paper in it: if it flares up and bursts into flame, it means the gas is 100% oxygen (or at least is rich in oxygen). Now I would GUESS that if you do this experiment and use normal air but at 5 atmospheres pressure, you might get the same result.
And all of this is why I got confused about what happened on Apollo. I don’t know about psi either, and I was too lazy to go look it up, so I can’t work out what the partial pressure of the oxygen in the cabin was, or the total pressure for that matter. But it seems to me if they had a pure oxygen atmosphere in there, but the pressure was only about 0.2 atmospheres, then there would not have been any larger than normal fire hazard.
On the other hand, if they had 100% oxygen at normal atmospheric pressure, then there would have been a greatly increased fire hazard. Because of oxygen’s toxicity under those circumstances, I assumed they would not have exposed the astronauts to such conditions. But if oxygen is not that toxic, as you said above, then perhaps that solves the mystery.
January 31st, 2007 at 5:08 pm
[...] Phil Plait (AKA The Bad Astronomer) recently made a post about the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire that killed three of mankind’s finest. He explains in exquisitely simple detail (yes, simple detail) how exactly the fire happened and what lead to it. Then he talks a little more and that’s when (in case you aren’t a space nut) you should sit up and pay attention. [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Well said Phil.
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:02 am
[...] in the lunar program. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee perished when a spark ignited the pure-oxygen atmosphere of the Apollo Command Module at Pad 34. Crew info here; Image collections here and here. The loss [...]
August 25th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
They couldn’t get out in time.. The fire was so intense that everything including them caught fire and was incinerated to ashes before anyone could do anything to help..
September 14th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
[...] Kranz led by example. Here is his address to NASA after the a fire swept through the Apollo 1 capsule during a test, killing all three astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee, and Gus [...]