The events on this day in history for our heritage companies are noted below.
The earliest event was in 1959, the latest events was in 1999
Three milestone events (5 to 65+ years ago)
Human Spaceflight:
1967 – Apollo 1 (Apollo 204) pad fire during plugs-out electrical system test kills astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee
1985 – LANDING: STS-51-C (Discovery), KSC – MILESTONE: 40 years ago
Military and Classified Programs:
NONE
Exploration and Interplanetary Programs:
NONE
Earth-Monitoring and Civil Weather Satellite programs:
NONE
Commercial Programs:
1999 – LAUNCH: ROCSAT-2, LM Athena-1, LC46, CCAFS
Test, ICBM, FBM programs:
1959 – LAUNCH: GD Atlas C, LC12, CCAFS
1960 – LAUNCH: Lockheed Polaris A1, LC29A, CCAFS – MILESTONE: 65 years ago
1960 – LAUNCH: GD Atlas D, LC13, CCAFS – MILESTONE: 65 years ago
Other:
NONE
The photos today are of the Apollo 1 crew (Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee), the fire damage to the Apollo Command Module and a memorial plaque that can be seen at the demolished LC-34 site. The photo credits are from NASA for the first two photos. The plaque photo was found on Wikipedia with the following information:
Christopher K. Davis 3 September 2000 released under the Creative Commons license. No changes were made to the photo. You are free:
- to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
- to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
- attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.
The investigation revealed the following (from NASA public sources, Wikipedia):
The review board identified several major factors which combined to cause the fire and the astronauts’ deaths:
- An ignition source most probably related to “vulnerable wiring carrying spacecraft power” and “vulnerable plumbing carrying a combustible and corrosive coolant”
- A pure oxygen atmosphere at higher than atmospheric pressure
- A cabin sealed with a hatch cover which could not be quickly removed at high pressure
- An extensive distribution of combustible materials in the cabin
- Inadequate emergency preparedness (rescue or medical assistance, and crew escape)
A major redesign of the Command Module was undertaken, with future manned missions using the Block II design.
