Perserverance

Over the course of two generations, three events occurred, and interestingly the date of the month of each event being less than a week apart.  Each linked by the human desire for exploration of space. Each linked by the failure of humans.  Each linked by the loss of life. Each linked by knowledge gained from a tragic event.  From failure the human desire for perseverance prevailed, and set forth that learning from your failures is better than quitting. This was perhaps in the first of the three events. I refer, of course, to the January 27, 1967 fire in the command module during a test event of what  would become known as Apollo 1, 21 years later the Challenger explosion, just after take-off on January 28, 1986, and the Columbia re-entry disintegration on February 1, 2003 just eleven years ago.  Perhaps due to time, or the successful nature of the Apollo program, but the test event of January 27, 1967 is seemingly little remembered, yet is was a series of events that would lead the nation to set men on the moon. The middle of winter was not kind to the U.S. space program.

With the benefit of hindsight we look back at the success of the Apollo program, and the nation's ability to meet the May 25, 1961 challenge set by President Kennedy that we send a man to the moon and return him safely to earth.  Other presidents have posed space challenges, going to Mars for example, but they remain unmet.  If President Kennedy had not met that fateful day just over fifty years ago, it makes one wonder if the nation would have chosen to not go ahead and complete the mission articulated six years ahead of the Apollo 1 capsule fire.  As the nation was pulling apart at its seams in the turbulent 1960's there was the Apollo program which held the fascination of the nation and provided a sense of accomplishment.  The space race started in October 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik.  It is necessary to recall the context of the time, and its pitting the totalitarian state against a democratic state to see who could best the other in a difficult technological and human achievement. This was not lost on John F. Kennedy when he set his challenge.  Even to this day people exist who believe that man never made it to the moon, but rather was a trip to a western U.S. desert.  For the United States, the Mercury Program began in 1959 with the goal of putting a man into orbit before the Soviet Union.  As we know, the Soviets would put a man into orbit one month before Alan Shephard's sub-orbital flight in May 1961.  John Glenn in February 1962 would become the first American to reach orbital flight, and the third human.  With Kennedy's challenge, the program would shift gears to getting a man on the moon.

Gemini 8 Capsule of Neil Armstrong and David Scott
(Source: on-line Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum)

Gemini would be the middle program, squashed between the exciting Mercury where a man was first sent to space, and the anticipated Apollo of sending men to the moon.  Being the middle program it likely garnered as much attention in the United States as does the middle child in a family.  Yet, it was important to the success of the Apollo program in order to determine affects due to length of time in space, extra-vehicular activity (ie space walks), and to test and prove maneuvers that would be necessary for a successful manned mission to the moon.  The Gemini program was originally known as Mercury Mark II, but with its command module holding two people, side by side, like twins, was renamed. Astronaut Gus Grissom was heavily involved with the design of the Gemini capsule so much so that the other astronauts referred to it as the "Gusmobile." Grissom was the astronaut on Mercury's Liberty Bell 7 when upon splashdown the hatch door flung open. Grissom would end up in the water and almost drowned before being reached by rescue crews.

Apollo 1 Crew (source: Wikipedia.com)

Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and  Ed White were chosen to be the prime crew for the first Apollo mission.  Designated as Apollo Saturn-204, the launch rehearsal test began on the morning of that late January day.  The test had more than one glitch, first was a strong odor in the oxygen supply, which one of the occupants referred to as sour buttermilk.  Then came a communications glitch, prompting Grissom to yell: "How are we going to get to the moon if we can't talk between two or three buildings?"  As the test proceeded it was late in the day at 6:31 p.m. when the word "Fire" came across the communication system.  Deke Slayton, originally from Wisconsin and one of the original astronauts, would see white flame on a closed circuit camera system.  Technicians raced to the platform, the crew struggled to get out, but to no avail.  Ironically, part of the reason for lack of exit was the difficulty in opening the hatch from the inside.  To avoid a problem as occurred on Grissom's Mercury mission, the door opening was made more secure, with no one realizing that the designers went too far.  But, it was a pure oxygen environment, in part to cut down on weight, and flammable items in the capsule that doomed the men regardless of ability to open the hatch.  The flame was sparked by a partially bare wire near Grissom's position.

Apollo Mission Command Module mock-up, Cape Canaveral, FL
1996 photo by T Hovel

As heart wrenching as that event was, it was not followed by a defeatist attitude.  The policy makers, managers, engineers, designer's and mechanics redoubled their efforts, investigated the problems, and developed solutions.  The more than eighteen month delay would lead to the success of Apollo 7 in October 1968, and Apollo 8 which would leave the bonds of the third planet from the sun on December 21, 1968 and go around the moon. (Apollo missions 2-6 were unmanned missions.) History was made, however, on July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong took "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." It took a special type of person to decide to go beyond the atmosphere and that is why Tom Wolfe termed the original Mercury Seven, as having the "Right Stuff."  Grissom, as was Deke Slayton, was one of the original Mercury Seven. I have to think that Grissom, White and Chaffee are proud that the Apollo program obtained its goal.  While a series of unfortunate events left women widowed and children without their father, the risks were not unknown. Legend has it that Gus Grissom picked a lemon off a tree at his home to take with him on the test as representative of the state of the hardware he would test.

Saturn Rocket Engine, Cape Canaveral, FL
1996 photo by T Hovel

It was after the fire, with pressure from other astronauts that NASA would designate the failure of this test operation as Apollo 1, breaking with tradition of only numbering actual flights.  The crew of AS-204, however, often referred to themselves as Apollo 1.  The engineers,scientists, mechanics, and the nation persevered not allowing one terrible moment on January 27, 1967 to alter its ultimate goal  Trials and tragedies are part of life, it is how one handles the trails and tragedies that forms character, perhaps more so than handling of success or good fortune.  It is rather fortunate that perseverance allows for making good from bad.