Eight Years to the Moon

by Nancy Atkinson

  A 100-pound (45-kg) thrust Gemini reaction control engine, used for on-orbit positional maneuvering and control. This control system was called the Orbital Attitude Maneuvering System (OAMS) and was located in the aft structure of the orbital vehicle, which was separated prior to Earth reentry. Credit: NASA/Mike Salinas and Norman Chaffee.

  because Apollo had the same type of maneuvering thrusters. While the Gemini flights were still ongoing, Vaughan had asked the program manager, Charles Matthews, if they could put instrumentation on some of the later Gemini flights to get more data. Matthews refused, saying it wasn’t an issue. But immediately after the final Gemini mission, Matthews sent a memo to Vaughan saying he and his team needed to figure out the problem, and they had one month in which to do it.

  Vaughan went to Matthews and said, “How come you didn’t let us put that instrumentation on Gemini so we could figure this out?”

  Matthews replied that frankly, if he had allowed the instrumentation, he’d have everyone wondering what the problem was and then they’d ask all sorts of questions about whether Gemini could still fly safely. Since it was more of a nagging problem, Vaughan and Matthews knew it wasn’t a safety issue. But now Matthews provided Vaughan additional resources, sending him and his team to St. Louis to the McDonnell facility—where Gemini had been built—for an exhaustive set of tests. They got lucky. They were able to simulate the problem on the first test run, finding the small orifices in the thrusters were getting clogged by an excess of iron in the oxidizer.

  “I think one of the reasons we were so successful in Gemini and then Apollo was that we worked hard,” Vaughan said. “But we were lucky, too, and we’ll take luck every time. But anytime we had a failure, we didn’t stop analyzing it until we knew the root cause because we knew we had to understand it at every level.”

  The crew of Apollo 1, during recovery training. Credit: NASA.

  BY THE END OF NOVEMBER 1966, PERSISTENT problems with several systems on the Apollo spacecraft forced NASA to reluctantly delay the first crewed Apollo launch until February 1967. During a design certification review, issues were noted on the thrusters along with problems with the service propulsion system and the environmental control unit, and ill-fitting seats in the CM (called crew couches) required engineers from North American to travel to the Cape to enact a complicated fix.

  With the first flight delayed, the rest of the flight schedule subsequently shifted. NASA hoped at least two other Apollo test flights could be sent to Earth orbit in 1967: Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott and Rusty Schweickart would test out the LM in a mission called AS-205, and then NASA picked Frank Borman, Mike Collins and Bill Anders for what they hoped would be the first flight of the Block II CM.

  The news reports of the day, however, mainly focused on other critical events across the country and from the other side of the world. An uptick in US involvement in the Vietnam conflict—the bombings of the North Vietnamese capital Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong—sparked large-scale antiwar protests in cities like New York, Washington, DC, and Chicago. Civil rights protests continued against discrimination and segregation. So, while the eyes of most of the country were focused on Earth-bound problems, NASA kept its sights on reaching for the Moon.

  CHAPTER 6

  1967

  Early morning view of Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, showing Apollo 4 Spacecraft 017/Saturn 501, uncrewed, Earth-orbital space mission ready for launch, with a full Moon in the upper left part of the image. The 363-foot (111-m) tall Apollo/Saturn V space vehicle was launched at 7:00 am EST, November 9, 1967. Credit: NASA.

  Thinking about what we may have missed is what kept us up at night.

  —GLENN ECORD, Apollo structures and materials engineer

  IN MID-JANUARY 1967, FRANK HUGHES went to Downey, California, with Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. North American Aviation had their own version of the simulator, called the Mission Evaluator, and it incorporated an actual Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), so it provided different—if not better—training for the crew.

  “We were about a month away from launch, and our simulator was still not working as good as it should,” Hughes said. “In the Mission Evaluator, we were getting it all done, and the crew really gained a lot of confidence. They felt the mission was coming together.”

  The astronauts also spent considerable time in technical briefings and discussions with North American engineers. Over the past year, the crew had visited the plant frequently, watching their spacecraft come together piece by piece. They knew how everything fit together, how all the systems were designed to work. They participated in design reviews and inspections, read numerous discrepancy reports and aired complaints and frustrations. At times, they weren’t certain if Spacecraft 012 would ever be ready to fly. But now most of the open work items and hardware failures had been dealt with. The astronauts felt that while it wasn’t completely perfect, their spacecraft had evolved into a very workable machine.

  The prime crew of the first manned Apollo spaceflight Apollo/Saturn 204 (AS-204) inspect spacecraft equipment during a tour of North American Aviation’s (NAA) Downey facility. In the foreground, left to right, are astronauts Roger B. Chaffee, Virgil I. Grissom and Edward H. White II. NAA engineers and technicians are in the background. Credit: NASA.

  The Apollo 1 prime crewmembers prepare to enter the Command Module inside the altitude chamber at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Entering the hatch is astronaut Virgil “Gus” Grissom, commander; behind him is Roger Chaffee, Lunar Module pilot; standing at the left with chamber technicians is Edward White II, Command Module pilot. Credit: NASA.

  Hughes learned a lot that week, too, and in the evenings he went out for dinner with the three astronauts and they enjoyed a few drinks and a lot of laughs. They had spent so much time together the past few months, and to Hughes, being with these guys was just like being with family.

  Out at Cape Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center and North American technicians mated the Command and Service Modules (CSM) to the Saturn IB, and the stack was moved to Launch Complex 34. The teams worked on the list of more than a hundred significant engineering work orders and resolved technical problems. It appeared as though everything just might come together for the February 21 launch.

  But a few critical tests remained, and on January 27, the astronauts needed to participate in a checkout called a plugs-out test, a full simulation of the Apollo launch countdown, overseen from both the Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center and Mission Control in Houston. The crew would be in the Command Module (CM), on top of the rocket on the launchpad to confirm the CSM could function properly on its own internal power. No propellants had been loaded and all the pyrotechnics were disabled, so the test was considered nonhazardous.

  Grissom, White and Chaffee boarded the spacecraft shortly after 1:00 p.m. Eastern time, wearing their spacesuits and helmets so they could connect to the spacecraft’s oxygen and communication systems, just like during a real launch.

  From the beginning, a series of frustrating technical problems surfaced, causing holds in the countdown. When Grissom was connected to the oxygen, he reported an odor like sour buttermilk in his suit. A delay of an hour and twenty minutes ensued while technicians troubleshot the cause. The smell eventually dissipated, and finally, the pad crew sealed the spacecraft hatch, with the air in the capsule replaced with pure oxygen at 16.7 pounds per square inch, according to NASA’s standard atmosphere inside all US spacecraft sitting on a launchpad.

  As countdown resumed, a communications issue developed with Grissom’s microphone; it couldn’t be turned off. Additional problems led to frustrating periods of garbled communications and static between the crew, the Operations and Checkout Building and the Launch Complex 34 blockhouse. Various countdown functions were performed as communications permitted, but the frequent delays meant the test was running long.

  Finally, an almost complete failure in communications forced another hold in the count. At 6:20 p.m., cont
rollers announced the count would resume in ten minutes.

  At 6:30 p.m., the loop crackled with static, then more garbled communications from the launch control room. Grissom said, “How are we going to get to the Moon if we can’t talk between two or three buildings?”

  With only static as a reply, White said, “They can’t hear a thing you’re saying.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Grissom muttered, and then he repeated his query to the flight controllers, wondering how they were going to get to the Moon.

  In Houston, it was 5:30 p.m. Central time. Gary Johnson, an electrical engineer, was monitoring the plugs-out test, sitting at his console in the Staff Support Room (SSR), an auxiliary room adjacent to Mission Control where experts provided technical support to the flight controllers. Johnson supported the Electrical, Environmental and Consumables Manager, and was one of the few people still in the SSR. With the test going long, most everyone from the support team had gone home for the day.

  Dr. Kurt Debus, left, director of the Kennedy Space Flight Center (KSC), participated in the countdown demonstration test for the Apollo 11 mission in Firing Room 1 of the KSC control center, the same type of test the crew of Apollo 1 was participating in when fire erupted inside their spacecraft. Credit: NASA.

  At 5:31, Johnson’s console indicated an electrical spike, from the CM. A few seconds later, he heard some shouting on his headset, then a scream of “Fire!” and sounds of Kennedy Space Center personnel trying to communicate with the crew.

  Gerry Griffin was standing in Mission Control by his Guidance Navigation and Control console. During the hold to fix the communication problems, most of the flight controllers had left the room to take a break, but Griffin remained and for some reason left his headset on. He heard some noise, like static. Then soon the word fire from the crew.

  Guidance Officer Dutch von Ehrenfried sat nearby. “Dutch, did you hear that?” Griffin said with alarm, and then yelled to the other controllers there might be a fire on the launchpad. It took several minutes to realize the gravity of what was going on at the Cape.

  The fire was inside the CM.

  Back in the SSR, Johnson was still listening in on his headset to all the loops, trying to get any information he could. “Pretty soon Chris Kraft came running into the SSR and said, ‘We need to play back our data so everyone can review it,’“ Johnson said. “And then he told us no phone calls out of the building. We knew something crazy was going on out at the Cape, but I kept thinking since the crew were in their spacesuits, they should be okay. I was holding out hope.”

  Then, after several minutes, Johnson heard the Cape test conductor tell Kraft to go a private phone. Johnson’s heart sank. He knew that meant the news was bad.

  The news was worse than anyone could possibly imagine.

  At the same moment Johnson’s console indicated the spike, a wire sparked inside the spacecraft. In the pure-oxygen environment, the fire spread throughout the cabin in a matter of seconds. On the open mic, Chaffee said something that sounded like flames.

  Two seconds later White yelled, “Hey, we’ve got a fire in the cockpit!” and then Chaffee shouted, “We’ve got a bad fire, we’re burning up …” Then came screams. Then silence.

  The communications loop at the Cape came alive, “Hey crew! Can you egress at this time, confirm? Pad leader! Get in there and help them! Gus, can you read us? Pad leader, can we get a confirmation?”

  A closed-circuit TV was in the blockhouse 218 feet below the burning CM, showing a live feed of the interior of the spacecraft. Horrified ground support technicians watched the burst of flames envelop the cockpit as Ed White attempted to open the inner hatch. Technicians right outside the spacecraft in a small enclosure in the Mobile Service Structure quickly tried to open the hatch, but suddenly the spacecraft hull ruptured and a wall of fire and burning debris whooshed out, hurling the technicians backward. Other technicians on the same level as the spacecraft ran from the catwalk into the White Room, but thick black clouds of smoke billowed out, filling the White Room and two levels of Pad 34’s service structure with a thick carbon monoxide haze. Some of the technicians pressed toward the spacecraft, but they began to pass out from the fumes; the next wave of rescuers from lower levels came up and grabbed the available gas masks. Still, the technicians passed out. The masks were designed for filtering out toxic fumes from propellant and were not the closed, oxygen-providing masks that were needed at this crucial moment. The remaining technicians created a plan: They formed a relay, taking gulps of air and holding their breath as long as they could to go out to the burning spacecraft and try to open the hatch.

  Then a new danger became evident. Someone in the Control Center feared the CM might explode, or the fire might set off the launch-escape system atop the entire spacecraft stack. Either event could ignite the entire service structure. Some technicians left while they could, but others remained, helping the injured, trying to rescue the astronauts.

  Roughly five minutes after the fire started, the final relay of technicians opened the searing hatch. The fire had quenched itself when atmospheric air rushed into the CM through the ruptured hull.

  The astronauts were dead. The tubes connecting their spacesuits to the oxygen melted in the extreme heat, and the astronauts were asphyxiated from toxic fumes, overcome from the flames and heat. The time from the first indication of the fire to the final crew communication and loss of all telemetry was seventeen seconds.

  FRANK HUGHES WAS ON-SITE AT THE SIM facility at Kennedy Space Center that evening, working with one of the contractors when, at about 6:40 p.m., someone stuck their head through the door and said, “Something wrong with the crew? Have you heard anything?”

  “No, I don’t know anything,” Hughes said. “They’re out in the spacecraft.” Hughes went in his office to call his boss, but the phone was already ringing. From then on, all hell broke loose. The first caller said there had been an accident, the next one said the crew had been injured. Each time the phone rang the news got worse and worse and worse. The crew was dead.

  Hughes was so young, he’d never experienced death before. No one he had ever known in his entire life had died; and now three of his friends were all dead, in the same day, in the same horrible way.

  Hughes’s branch chief, Riley McCafferty, came in the office just as the phone rang again. It was Deke Slayton.

  “We need to get somebody to go out and check the switches in the spacecraft,” Slayton told McCafferty. “They’re not sure that the crew might’ve thrown a switch or something that caused it. Can you get one of your guys to head out?”

  “Frank’s here,” he said. Hughes followed McCafferty out to his car and they drove over to Launchpad 34. McCafferty explained that they wanted Hughes to slide in the spacecraft on a board and write down all the positions of the switches before they took the bodies out.

  The idea of actually going into the spacecraft … Hughes couldn’t even think about it. It was all a shock. These three guys he had worked with, horsed around with, been out to lunch or dinner with almost every day. It was like he’d just lost three older brothers. There was guilt. What had they done wrong? Could he have done something to keep this from happening? What the hell had they been doing? What had anyone been doing? He couldn’t even think. But, Hughes decided, he was going into that spacecraft and he’d just do his job, because he wanted to help Gus, Ed and Roger and he wanted to help everyone figure out what the hell had happened.

  Hughes and McCafferty went up to the spacecraft.

  Chaffee was still in his couch; he had undone his harness. White was still in the middle seat, twisted and reaching up, trying to open the hatch. Grissom had rolled to one side, trying to get away from the worst of the flames, nearly on top of White. Their spacesuits were charred, melted together. The interior of the CM looked like someone had used a blowtorch, with some areas totally destroyed while adjacent areas were virtually unscathed.

  Hughes looked around. Firefighters and medical teams tended to
the twenty-seven technicians who were overcome by the carbon monoxide fumes and heat; some were burned.

  Slayton came over, clearly distraught. He looked at Hughes and said, “You don’t have to go in there, Frank. Some of the switches are melted; they’re going to have to take them all apart to find out what happened.” Then he paused and added, “They didn’t cause this. They didn’t.”

  Later, Slayton followed Hughes and McCafferty down the elevator from the gantry and then said, “Since you’re here, Frank, go over to the Operations and Checkout Building. People will be coming in from all over the country, they’re going to start an investigation right away. We can put everybody up in the crew quarters. Check them in and get them whatever they need.”

  Astronaut Frank Borman got there first; he had jumped in his T-38 and flew directly from Houston. Then other astronauts and NASA officials arrived, getting there as soon as they could. Hughes stayed all night as the quartermaster, ensuring everyone who needed a room got one. He ordered extra food and found extra cooks; he made sure everyone had breakfast in the morning. He was busy until 10:00 a.m. He didn’t even think twice about it—he was glad to help any way he could. And being busy meant he didn’t have any time to think. It had been a horrible, horrible night.

  The charred remains of the Apollo 1 cabin interior. Credit: NASA.

  THE NIGHT OF JANUARY 27 WAS SUPPOSED to be a celebration. That day in Washington, DC, NASA hosted an Apollo Executives’ Conference, a congratulatory affair for the contractors who contributed to Gemini and a welcome party for the Apollo contractors. Several attendees of the conference were invited to the White House to witness the signing of the Outer Space Treaty, a UN document that stated no nation could claim any region of space. President Johnson described the treaty as “the first firm step toward keeping outer space free forever from the implements of war.” A black-tie dinner had been arranged with James Webb, George Mueller and other top NASA officials and corporate leaders.