January 27, 2012

AS-204

45 years ago today, the US space program suffered the first fatalities of its history.  Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died during a routine training mission when their Apollo capsule caught fire.  The conflagration was aided by a 100% oxygen atmosphere in the capsule.  A single ignition source was unable to be found.  A study did find, however, that the standard nylon astronaut pressure suit of the time could generate enough static electricity to create a spark just from regular movement in the capsule's flight seats.

Grissom, White, Chaffee
Their mission was officially designated Apollo-Saturn 204, or AS-204, until April 24, 1967.  At that time, NASA retired the name Apollo 1 in their honor.

Sadly, they would not be the last to die in mankind's quest for space.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:47 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 131 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Indeed they weren't. I knew Richard Scobee when I was a little kid. Don't remember much about him personally, but he took me to NASA once for a tour. I didn't have a lot of interest in the space program after Challenger.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 28, 2012 12:53 AM (GJQTS)

2 And Google chooses to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the "world's largest snowflake".  *facepalm*

Posted by: Ed Hering at January 28, 2012 01:07 PM (4deSp)

3 In their defense, if they commemorated every great tragedy their site would look pretty bleak.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at January 30, 2012 05:37 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
22kb generated in CPU 0.0187, elapsed 0.4438 seconds.
47 queries taking 0.4355 seconds, 279 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.