Introduction
Early in 1967 Project Apollo suffered its worst setback when all three members of the first crew to fly in an Apollo spacecraft died in a fire. The tragedy forced a reexamination of the project, especially NASA's supervision of its prime contractors, and delayed the first lunar landing by some unknown length of time.
The fire had no direct effect on the lunar science program other than to provide vitally needed time to catch up to the launch schedule. The experiments package, the selection of landing sites, and the lunar- surface geology program all put the time to good use.
Death at the Cape
On the afternoon of January 27, 1967, Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger B. Chaffee, prime crew of Apollo mission AS-204,* were reclining in spacecraft 012 atop their Saturn IB launch vehicle at Kennedy Space Center's launch complex 34. Flight and launch crews were conducting a "plugs-out" simulation to determine that the spacecraft would function properly on internal power. The test had been frequently delayed by problems with communications and the environmental- control system; these were exasperating but not abnormal and certainly not a portent of the day's climactic event. Just after 6:31 p.m. horrified ground crews heard a cry of alarm over the communications cir-
* Unofficially called "Apollo 1," the flight was more commonly referred to as "AS-204" - the fourth flight of a Saturn IB vehicle (Saturn IB flights were numbered in the 200s, Saturn V missions in the 500s). When flights were resumed, mission numbers started with Apollo 4, for reasons that were never completely clear.
cuits and saw a bright glow through the spacecraft window. Seconds later the command module rup- tured, filling the "white room" at the end of the access arm on the service structure with thick clouds of smoke. Technicians worked frantically to pry open the hatch but were repeatedly driven back by the smoke and heat. By the time they got the hatch open Grissom, White, and Chaffee were dead. A few minutes later medical help arrived, only to find that nothing could be done.** Officials quickly secured the launch pad and began the grim task of removing the bodies. NASA Administrator James Webb immediately appointed Floyd L. Thompson, director of Langley Research Center, chairman of an in- vestigating board*** to determine the cause of the tragedy.1
Manned space flight unquestionably entailed hazards, and it can be argued that much of the public's fascination with the early manned space flight programs grew out of the perception that it was an exceptionally dangerous business.2 This perception somewhat exaggerated the true situation. Space flight was dangerous, but NASA engineers at every level clearly realized the hazards and went to considerable lengths to minimize them. All the astronauts were aware of the risks and considered them acceptable. Not a man among them would have stayed in the program if he had believed his life was being wilfully risked for the sake of an ephemeral propaganda triumph. Emphasis on producing safe, reliable hardware permeated the program. The astronauts were active participants in design and devel- opment; frequent astronaut visits to contractor plants helped to ensure a workable design. Crewmen who had been assigned to flights followed their own spacecraft through assembly and testing. Not less important, the visits impressed on contractor employees the fact that the lives of real people - not anonymous consumers, but people they knew - depended on every component of the system.
One result was that in 5 years 19 Americans had flown 16 earth-orbital missions without serious mis- hap. Although disaster had flirted with both Mercury and Gemini,**** flying in space seemed to be no more dangerous than piloting high-performance aircraft - perhaps less so, for the only astronauts to die before the fire were killed in airplane accidents.
Not surprisingly, most attention had been focused on the dangers in space. Immediately after the fire, Administrator James Webb expressed a widely held view when he said, "Although everyone realized that some day space pilots would die, who would have thought the first tragedy would be on the ground [emphasis added]?"3 Perhaps the AS-204 fire was more traumatic because it did occur on the ground. Whatever the reason, public reaction was vigorous. After a brief period of shock, the nation's press began to ask questions, not only about the cause of the fire but about the wisdom of the manned lunar
** Postmortem examination disclosed that the crew had died of asphyxiation by toxic fumes produced by incomplete combustion of the synthetic materials in the spacecraft. All had been burned, but not severely enough to cause death. *** Other members were astronaut Frank Borman, MSC; Maxime A. Faget, MSC; E. Barton Geer Langley; Col. Charles F. Strang, USAF; Robert W. Van Dolah, U.S. Bureau of Mines (replacing Franklin A. Long of Cornell University, who had represented the President's Science Advisory Committee); George C. White, Jr., NASA Headquarters; John J. Williams, Kennedy Space Center; and George T. Malley, Langley, counsel. George W. Jeffs of North American Aviation was asked to serve as a consultant.
**** Grissom's Mercury capsule flooded and sank when its hatch accidentally blew off as he awaited recovery from the second suborbital Mercury flight. On Mercury's second earth-orbital mission Scott Carpenter overshot his landing area by nearly 300 kilometers, and for a while his fate was in question. Gemini had produced two incidents: Gemini VI's Titan vehicle shut down immediately after ignition, leading to a few anxious minutes, and a malfunctioning thruster set the Gemini VIII spacecraft spinning wildly, requiring premature termination of the mission.
exploration program.4 While Thompson's investigating board probed the charred spacecraft and traced its history from California to the Cape, NASA clamped a tight lid on speculation as to possible causes, issuing only brief interim reports. In spite of calls for an independent congressional investigation, both the Senate and House space committee chairmen agreed to defer public hearings until NASA could complete its own probe.5
In early April the investigating board submitted its report concluding that the precise point of origin of the fire could not be positively identified. Investigators had found physical evidence of electric arcing from wires with damaged insulation. Sometime during manufacture or testing, apparently, an unno- ticed incidental contact had scraped the insulation from a wire, thus providing the path for a spark- exactly where, the investigators could not say, but the evidence pointed to a spot near Grissom's couch where components of the environmental control system had repeatedly been removed and replaced during testing.6 The arc had ignited flammable material and in the pure oxygen atmosphere# the result- ing fire had spread with astonishing rapidity.
Contributing to the disaster were an appalling number of factors that could only be called oversights, to put the best possible face on it. The simulation had not been considered hazardous because neither the launch vehicle nor the spacecraft contained any fuel, nor were the Saturn's pyrotechnics installed; consequently no emergency equipment or personnel were at the launch pad. Wiring carrying electrical power was not properly protected against accidental impact. Far too much flammable material - some 70 pounds (32 kilograms) of nylon netting, polyurethane foam, and Velcro fastening - had been hap- hazardly spread around the command module, creating unobstructed paths for flames. No provision had been made for the crew to get out of the spacecraft quickly in case of emergency. The hatch could not be opened in less than 90 seconds. Neither the board's report nor the congressional hearings that followed could explain why so many technical experts had failed to notice that spacecraft 012, as it sat on the launch pad on January 27, was simply a bomb that needed only a trigger to set it off. Confident in Apollo's design approach, which emphasized eliminating the possibility of ignition by electrical components, and unaware of the intensity and speed of fires fed by pure oxygen, both NASA and contractor engineers had grossly underestimated the consequences of a flaw in their hardware or proce- dures. Many other problems had demanded attention throughout the fabrication of this prototype com- mand module, and - perhaps lulled by success in past programs - everyone had overlooked the hazards that were accumulating in the spacecraft.
In the months following NASA's investigation, responsibility for these conditions was liberally distributed among contractors and NASA managers alike. Charges of sloppy workmanship and poor quality control by the spacecraft contractor - which NASA should have corrected - seemed justified. Critics asked again whether the "end-of-the-decade" goal was, for no good reason, pushing Apollo out of control and whether there really was a "space race" that justified such haste. James Webb and George Mueller, who took most of the heat of Congress's investigation, doggedly and successfully defended the program's objectives as well as its schedule, aided by generally sympathetic congres- sional committees.7
# During the simulation, as it would be at launch on a real mission, the command module atmosphere was pure oxygen at 16.4 pounds per square inch (113 kilonewtons per square meter) pressure - 10 percent above normal atmospheric pressure.
The Apollo project survived the fire shaken but undeterred. NASA continued to aim for a lunar landing before 1970, but management (especially contractor supervision) would be tightened, procedures (es- pecially safety precautions) would be thoroughly investigated, combustible materials in the spacecraft would be rigorously controlled, and new and less flammable materials (particularly fabrics) would be sought.8
Perhaps the greatest damage was to NASA's standing with Congress. The space agency no longer seemed larger than life, especially to members who had never been strongly committed to either side of the manned space flight debate.9 Webb left an atypically bad impression in his appearances before the Congressional committees. He responded testily to suggestions that the Thompson board, made up of NASA's own people, was unlikely to get to the bottom of the accident, and was not cooperative when committee members asked for a report on the performance of the spacecraft contractor.10
The Thompson board pointed out numerous deficiencies in the design of the spacecraft and recom- mended changes in management and quality control throughout the program. Even while the board was preparing its report NASA was hard at work evaluating changes. Obviously the command and service module needed the most attention, but the lunar module was equally rigorously scrutinized, and no aspect of the Apollo program was spared detailed examination for hazards.11
How much the lunar landing would be set back no one knew.## Throughout 1966 the Office of Manned Space Flight had been working toward two unmanned test flights of the Saturn V starting in 1967, to be followed by three manned flights to check out the launch vehicle, both spacecraft, and the complex support system for the lunar landing. NASA's public position was that "lunar flights," orbital or land- ing, would begin before the end of 1969. Planning schedules showed several "simulated" lunar mis- sions - which might orbit the moon but not land - the first of which might be flown as early as October 1967 on AS-503 or as late as August 1968 on AS-506. The initial landing might be assigned to AS- 506, but the earliest mission unambiguously categorized in OMSF's master schedules as a "lunar mission" and not a "simulation" was AS-507, scheduled for November 1968.12
The fire wrecked that timetable, and for four months afterward all monthly OMSF launch schedules were stamped "UNDER REVIEW." At the end of May 1967, a new master schedule showed only four Saturn V flights preceding the first lunar landing: two unmanned, to check out the launch vehicle; one earth-orbital flight to gain experience in simultaneous operation of the command and service module and the lunar module; and one lunar mission simulation. The Saturn V flights were interspersed among eight Saturn IB missions; as many of these would be flown as necessary to discover and correct flaws in the spacecraft and operations. The May schedule still showed the first landing in the last quarter of 1968, but no one was authorized to mention any date more specific than "before the end of 1968" in public.13
## Two years later Mueller told a congressional subcommittee that the fire had delayed the first manned flight by 18 months, but in the interim progress was made in areas other than the command and service module.
The Fire and the Science Program
In March 1966, when NASA contracted with the Bendix Corporation to build the Apollo lunar surface experiments package (ALSEP), delivery of the first flight-qualified set of instruments was scheduled for July 1967, seven months before AS-504, the first Saturn V mission to which an experiment package was assigned.14 It was an optimistic schedule, even though preliminary design work for several of the experiments had already been funded by NASA grants.15 By late fall the package was in schedule trouble. Two instruments were experiencing minor difficulties, the central data- collecting station was in a critical state, and the magnetometer was having serious development problems.16 In late December 1966 Headquarters was considering shifting certain instruments from the second mission to the first on account of the lagging magnetometer. Scientists were particularly anxious about this, because the data from the magnetometer were essential to interpreting the results of two other experiments. Experi- menters urged that a search be started for a simpler magnetometer in case Ames's sophisticated instru- ment could not be made ready in time.17
Besides the experiments themselves, the radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) required work. The RTG consisted of a large "fuel cask," packed with plutonium-238, supplying heat to an array of thermocouples that produced electricity for the instruments. Project engineers were having difficulty assuring that the radioactive fuel would not be dispersed into the atmosphere in case of an abort during launch.18 At the critical design review the astronauts discovered several hazards to the crew member who had to remove the hot (500 degrees C, 932 degrees F) fuel capsule from its storage space in the LM and insert it into the thermocouple assembly while setting up the instruments. Redesign of the package or revision of procedures was necessary.19
As the status of Apollo cleared in the months following the fire, a degree of optimism returned to the experiments schedule. In July 1967 the first lunar mission was AS-506, set for late November 1968, and the experiments for the first four lunar missions were no longer lagging.20 Even so, problems remained. In late June 1967 Leonard Reiffel of Apollo Program Director Sam Phillips's scientific staff wrote Phillips suggesting that "we do not schedule the ALSEP for the first lunar landing." Reiffel cited the problems of the magnetometer, the many unknowns that could affect the deployment and function of the experiments, and the weight problems that were hindering production of the lunar module. He offered his personal opinion that, except for the seismometer, the scientific experiments would not yield fundamental information about the moon that would be of immediate importance. All in all, Reiffel thought, the program might be better served in the long run by waiting until the second mission to fly the full complement of surface instruments: "An uncrowded time line on the lunar surface for the
first mission would seem to me to be more contributory to the advance of science than trying to do so much on the first mission that we do nothing well [emphasis in the original]."21
Reiffel's misgivings about the astronauts' work load and the time available for surface activities were not off target. Early in development, Jack Schmitt, one of the astronauts providing crew advice to the lunar surface experiments designers, discovered an undesirable legacy from earlier conceptual work on the instruments:
. . . In the early days, the crews. . . were worried about having enough to do on the moon. . . . In the early design stages they [the ALSEP designers] took to heart the crew input to "give us something to do," and it was a monster. . . . The way they had that thing put together it was going to take forever to deploy.
This design philosophy was intended to give substance to the argument that men were essential in lunar exploration, but to Schmitt it was the wrong approach. Precious time on the moon should not be wasted in the purely mechanical activity of deploying the instrument package. He and other astronauts worked hard to improve the design of the package so that deploying it did not take so much time, but it was slow going.22
Even before Reiffel's pessimistic evaluation of the science prospects for early flight, Phillips had been worried about the progress of the first instrument package. In early June he appointed a review team to look into the development of the magnetometer and another to examine the safety problems with the RTG.23 The magnetometer investigation team found that the technically sophisticated project had en- countered severe schedule delays and cost overruns, but concluded that Ames and its contractor had arrested the project's negative trends. Still, the magnetometer clearly could not be ready for the first scheduled lunar landing. A simpler instrument proposed by investigators at Goddard Space Flight Center was briefly considered, but it could not meet the schedule either and was dropped. At the end of August 1967, Phillips recommended to Deputy Administrator Robert Seamans that the magnetometer be taken off the first ALSEP and replaced by a laser reflector, a completely passive experiment which was under development. The prospects seemed good that a complete ALSEP package as originally planned could be flown On the second lunar landing mission.24 Ames's magnetometer remained in the schedule for the first landing throughout 1968, however.25
Without doubt the delay in the first lunar landing caused by the Apollo fire relieved some of the pres- sure on the ALSEP experimenters and developers. For all its human and economic cost, the 204 acci- dent forced a pause that was put to good use by those segments of the program (such as the science projects) that were less vitally affected by the fire than the spacecraft. The command module was suffering from many problems in early 1967, and it can be argued that sooner or later something as serious as the fire would have halted progress. The tragedy was that the price of straightening out the program was three lives.
PSAC Examines Post-Apollo Science Plans
During 1966, while the lunar landing program still seemed on track for successful completion within