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Apollo 1
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00:00:26www.hansgrohe.com
00:02:00First step, Project Gemini.
00:02:02In phase three of the project, Project Apollo, it carries three astronauts.
00:02:12Each phase is key to landing on the moon before the end of the decade.
00:02:22April 9th, 1959, Washington, D.C.
00:02:26This is a press conference.
00:02:28These seven young men will be the first astronauts.
00:02:32United States Project Mercury.
00:02:38People everywhere adopted those seven as total heroes, even before they made a space flight.
00:02:47And Gus was one of them.
00:03:02It was quite a surprise to Gus that all at once he was a celebrity, and I don't think that
00:03:08he ever really got used to that.
00:03:13He was a big hero in the little town of Mitchell.
00:03:22From a small town like Mitchell to have an astronaut, it was just magnificent.
00:03:27Everybody was so proud to even say they were from Mitchell after Gus, you know, did so well and became
00:03:35an astronaut.
00:03:39He met his wife in high school.
00:03:42They were high school sweethearts.
00:03:47Betty turned out to be a very strong woman.
00:03:51She did a lot to help Gus in his career.
00:03:57Gus always wanted to be a pilot, and he wanted to be a jet pilot.
00:04:04He got his wings, and the Korean War was going on, so he was immediately sent over there.
00:04:17He flew 100 combat missions.
00:04:21He got shot at several times.
00:04:25He volunteered to fly more, but they said no and sent him home.
00:04:34When he came back, got into test flight, he really enjoyed flying different aircrafts.
00:04:41And NASA decided that the astronauts should come from military test pilots.
00:04:50And there were something like 300 that agreed to apply.
00:04:56And Gus was one of them.
00:05:04Ben had his first great success in space when the Russians pushed a man across the threshold.
00:05:09He was Yuri Gagarin, the astronaut the Russians lionized as the first to orbit the Earth.
00:05:14It was the propaganda coup of the year.
00:05:29The press created the space race between the two major powers in the world.
00:05:40It immediately became almost like a contest, like a sporting contest, if you will, in that they were out to
00:05:49defeat us, we were out to defeat them.
00:05:54I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a
00:06:02man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
00:06:06No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range
00:06:13exploration of space.
00:06:18In 1961, then, President Kennedy said, we want to go to the moon, and we're going to do it in
00:06:24this decade.
00:06:27And I can remember even then thinking, can we do that in nine years from a standing start?
00:06:49When they started building Mercury, everything was new.
00:06:57And these were new, bright, young engineers, and it was kind of a, we'll try this and see if this
00:07:05works, and if it doesn't, we'll try something else.
00:07:10It's Captain Virgil, Gus Grissom, raring to go.
00:07:20A pat on the back from Colonel Glenn in reserve, enters the capsule at Cape Canaveral.
00:07:25Must be pretty lonely in there.
00:07:31Three, two, one.
00:07:45Five, seven, six, two, and trajectory is good.
00:07:52Roger.
00:07:52A man's got her.
00:07:54You can cross her.
00:07:59Fade, future six, two, and trajectory is good.
00:08:02Oh, roger. It looks good in here.
00:08:07Oh, boy. The sky is very, very black.
00:08:11And the sun is really bright.
00:08:15There's a lot of stuff floating around up here.
00:08:18I haven't seen any land anyplace yet.
00:08:22The capsule is coming around into orbit attitude.
00:08:28Oh, there I see the coast.
00:08:36Roger, I'm in entry attitude.
00:08:40Use of the building. We're up to six.
00:08:43All right.
00:08:45This shoot is good.
00:08:46We're getting ready for impact here.
00:08:49You can see the water coming right on.
00:08:52Of course, right here, we're ready to search for you.
00:08:55Okay, it can be a lot of them.
00:08:58I'll be ready for you.
00:09:15I've watched it much like everybody else did on TV.
00:09:19He was very close to getting drowned with a helicopter beating down on him while it tried to lift the
00:09:23capsule, which was filling up with water.
00:09:30The helicopter that was trying to pick up the spacecraft grappled in just like they normally did.
00:09:35But it was getting so heavy they couldn't pick it up.
00:09:44And the helicopter engine overheated and they finally had to cut it loose and let it go.
00:10:00Gus was lucky to live through that.
00:10:04It was embarrassing to him whether he did or did not cause it.
00:10:07He knew he was going to get blamed and that lived with him for a long time.
00:10:16We talked about that.
00:10:18He said, I was just sitting there and all at once, pow, the thing blew.
00:10:26The press and the media are sometimes not too courteous.
00:10:35Some of them are very aggressive, looking in windows, all that sort of thing.
00:10:42And so he had this house built and he had no windows in the front.
00:10:48That was done purposely.
00:11:14The adapted firing of a monster rocket heralds the next step into space beyond mercy.
00:11:19This is Saturn, America's giant missile of the future.
00:11:23It's the work of a man who now is one of the most important figures in America's space program.
00:11:2848 years old Ferner von Braun.
00:11:32Dr. Von Braun, this is only roughly half the size of a Finnish Saturn, this enormous machine of others, is
00:11:38it not?
00:11:38Yes, this is what we call the first stage.
00:11:40There will be two more stages mounted on top of this.
00:11:43Von Braun had been brought to this country at the end of World War II.
00:11:47They've been blowing up London for months and months.
00:11:53And so a large number of his people got into there and surrendered to the U.S.
00:11:57where he might continue what he was doing.
00:12:02What Von Braun did was extremely important to the future of space flight at that time.
00:12:15I can remember saying, by Gully, we're going to do this.
00:12:20We're going to, if we don't do it, we're going to die trying.
00:12:41Field operations will be staffed with Colesman representatives at North American Aviation, White Sands, the Man Space Center, AC Spark
00:12:49Plug, MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, and Kate Kennedy.
00:12:56Unfortunately, in this world, as you expand your knowledge, as you expand your capability, the interfaces begin to mount.
00:13:09Interfaces that are outside of your organization, much less inside your organization.
00:13:14So you've got to make sure that we are keeping up with what they're doing over there.
00:13:20How do we tell the spacecraft designers what we need?
00:13:24They don't know how to do it either.
00:13:28They're asking you questions every day.
00:13:30What do you want them to do? How do you want them to do it? What is it supposed to
00:13:33do?
00:13:33Who's got the mission plan?
00:13:35Who's got the mission plan?
00:13:48.
00:14:00Dad was selected in the second group of nine astronauts,
00:14:04which was probably the best moment of all our lives.
00:14:08As a son of an astronaut, that was like a special event,
00:14:13you know, how can you believe that?
00:14:19Ed stood out.
00:14:22Ed fit in perfectly.
00:14:25He was tall, great-looking,
00:14:27and he was just an image that you thought about it.
00:14:31That's who I want to go into space with.
00:14:38Dad went up with my granddad when he was 12 years old,
00:14:43and they flew in a T-6 airplane,
00:14:45and my granddad let him take the controls,
00:14:49and he felt like it was a natural thing that he did.
00:14:53That was when his mind kind of said,
00:14:55I want to do this.
00:14:56I want to be a pilot someday.
00:15:04He went on to West Point, where his father had gone before him,
00:15:10and he was a world-class runner and hurdler.
00:15:18And so he almost made the Olympic team.
00:15:24He was on the track team, and he went to the Olympic trials
00:15:27and came in third place.
00:15:30Only two would go at that point,
00:15:32but he said it might have changed his career,
00:15:34and maybe it would have been different
00:15:36and wouldn't have been an astronaut.
00:15:38You never know, you know?
00:15:52Well, they met on a date,
00:15:54and my mom was on a date with someone else,
00:15:57and my dad was over there,
00:15:59and apparently she was batting her eyelashes or whatever.
00:16:03And then one thing, I think, led to the other.
00:16:09They married about six months later.
00:16:13I came along about nine months later.
00:16:27And then Bonnie was then about two and a half years later.
00:16:45New F-100 jets go into operational service
00:16:48with Air Force squadrons in Germany,
00:16:49bringing the supersonic gauge from the experimental stage
00:16:52to the first line of Western air defense.
00:17:06They were flying F-100s,
00:17:08and basically looking for any trouble
00:17:12on the border of Germany and Russia.
00:17:29Ed White was more cerebral.
00:17:31He thought things through in a way that others may not have.
00:17:37And he didn't try to exude that my ego's bigger than yours, you know?
00:17:43And some of those first seven did.
00:17:45But Ed, you know, was an extremely capable guy,
00:17:49and he was always so friendly.
00:17:51He was just a friendly, friendly person.
00:18:00Project Gemini is a two-man Earth orbital mission.
00:18:03It is an intermediate step between Projects Mercury and Apollo.
00:18:07Gemini will reveal man's capabilities
00:18:09during extended periods of time in space.
00:18:28He was very instrumental in the design of Gemini,
00:18:32to the point where the other astronauts got to call it the Gusmobile.
00:18:39He worked closely with the engineers,
00:18:42and some liked him and some didn't,
00:18:44because he was a very tough taskmaster.
00:18:48And I guess he took the approach that if I'm going to fly this,
00:18:51I want it to be exactly like I want it to be.
00:18:57Gus came across sometimes to people as being kind of gruff and,
00:19:01you know, sharp, but I never saw that.
00:19:04He was always laughing and telling jokes
00:19:08and kind of the typical pilot.
00:19:25There we are, 14 of us, the third group of astronauts.
00:19:29And, you know, when I look at it now, we were all very young.
00:19:37And, of course, we were all very excited to be selected at that point in the program.
00:19:46Everyone really respected that commitment on the part of JFK.
00:19:52The third group, when they came in, Roger Chaffee was one of them.
00:19:57And, boy, if you called Central Casting and asked them to send you an astronaut,
00:20:02they would send you Roger Chaffee,
00:20:04because he had the looks and the bearing and all of that.
00:20:17We were very excited.
00:20:17Lieutenant, congratulations on your selection to the new astronaut team.
00:20:20How do you feel about it?
00:20:21Very excited, very happy, and very honored that I could be chosen for this.
00:20:27I never dreamed that he would go that far.
00:20:34It was a new beginning in a different type of life.
00:20:39Mr. Chaffee, how do you feel about your husband's appointment?
00:20:42Oh, I'm thrilled to death. I think it is something that he has always wanted.
00:20:46And of course, what he wants, I want.
00:20:48And he's dreamed about it since high school, actually.
00:20:51So I'm real thrilled about it.
00:20:53Do you feel apprehensive at all? Worried at all?
00:20:56Not right now, but my view might change when he gets shot off into space.
00:21:01But right now I'm not.
00:21:02Cheryl, do you know what your daddy is?
00:21:04A rocket man.
00:21:06A rocket man?
00:21:13I met Roger my freshman year at Purdue University.
00:21:19I liked him.
00:21:20We were like two peas in a pod.
00:21:25I remember when he took flying lessons and was so excited when he did his solo.
00:21:34It was in his blood.
00:21:37And then we got married.
00:21:40I was 20 and Roger was 22.
00:21:45We got married in 57 and Cheryl was born in 58.
00:21:50And then Steve was born in 61.
00:21:52And everyone.
00:22:14Whoever forgives you're retarded,
00:22:23I never knew he was flying reconnaissance over Cuba.
00:22:27He never talked about it.
00:22:30And I think a lot of the pilots were like that.
00:22:32He never told me anything.
00:22:34He went to work and that was it.
00:22:46Everything was brand new.
00:22:48The place was new. We were new.
00:22:52What we were doing was completely new.
00:22:56Extremely exciting times.
00:23:10We worked 8 or 10, 12, 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.
00:23:14I mean, nobody thought anything about it.
00:23:16It was just, you know, part of what was the fun of being pioneers in this kind of a business.
00:23:29I would quiz him on the moon.
00:23:32We had a big picture of the moon in his office and I would point to different craters for him
00:23:39to talk about.
00:23:41He really wanted to go to the moon.
00:23:43He wanted to go to Mars.
00:24:05After Mercury, NASA showed great confidence in Gus by selecting him as the companion pilot for the first Gemini.
00:24:18He named his spacecraft the unsinkable Molly Brown after his experience with Mercury.
00:24:26NASA wasn't too happy with that.
00:24:29But they considered it better than his first choices of the Titanic.
00:24:37I think they made the perfect choice to put Gus as the first man Gemini commander.
00:24:47And they also put a good guy in the right seat, John Young, who was extremely good.
00:25:02I was assigned to be a coordinator between the first experiments that we flew in space, really.
00:25:11To be the liaison, as it were, between the crews and the scientists of various kinds, but also often doctors
00:25:20as well.
00:25:25And Gus was, I'm not here for you.
00:25:29I'm here as a test pilot.
00:25:34And if you're from the press, to heck with you.
00:25:37You know, if I have to deal with you, I will, but, you know.
00:25:41And if you're an experimenter, and especially if you want me to wear something or you want to poke a
00:25:46hole in me, forget it.
00:25:52And here I am, the interface between Gus, the commander of the first Gemini mission, and the first experimenters who
00:26:00were putting things in the spacecraft that would take some of his precious time.
00:26:04And so, as far as Gus was concerned, I was an enemy.
00:26:10...
00:26:203, 2, 1, 0.
00:26:43As I recall, the launch was normal, but every fight that I was ever a part of always had
00:26:50problems.
00:27:00One of the problems I remember encountered and it was in a system I was responsible for
00:27:05were the thrusters, the little attitude control thrusters, sticking, and they would clog
00:27:12up.
00:27:13Canary Capcom.
00:27:14Go ahead Canary Capcom.
00:27:15He might also try the attitude driver switch to secondary.
00:27:22Roger.
00:27:23Gus was smart and he was analytical.
00:27:28All the Brown Cape Capcom.
00:27:30How's your status on the thruster?
00:27:34I have to go.
00:27:35It's still dripping a little bit.
00:27:36It's not bad.
00:27:37I can hold.
00:27:38It falls.
00:27:38No problem.
00:27:50I watched flight on television.
00:27:54It was quite pleasing to see it land and know that the recovery was going very well.
00:28:29Three hundred miles above the earth.
00:28:31Colonel Alexei Leonov makes history.
00:28:33The Russian cosmonaut is the first man to brave the vacuum of space, twisting, turning,
00:28:38and somersaulting as he hurtles around the world at over 17,000 miles an hour.
00:28:54Jiminy 4, they put a great crew together.
00:28:57Ed, of course, the first guy to fly out of the second group.
00:29:02And McDivitt was the commander of that flight.
00:29:06He was a seasoned guy that knew what he was doing.
00:29:12The flight was originally set up to be pretty much of a medical experiment.
00:29:17There was a big medical uproar about whether we were going to die or not when we landed.
00:29:25It was the first mission to have four days in space, so we didn't know how they were going to
00:29:30be affected.
00:29:32This was a special mission to maybe pass the Russians for the first time from the beginning.
00:29:38We were behind trying to catch up.
00:29:41Ten, nine, ignition sequence start.
00:29:46Six, five, four, three, two, one.
00:29:51Two, five, four, three, two.
00:30:02Four, three, one.
00:30:11One, two, two, three, one.
00:30:13Four, four, three, two, one.
00:30:16Four, three, one.
00:30:17Four, four, six, seven.
00:30:19Four, one, two.
00:30:21Five, two, one!
00:30:21One, two, one.
00:30:26We're ready to have you get out whenever you're ready.
00:30:31Everybody in the control center was uneasy.
00:30:35It's the first time we put somebody had been outside the spacecraft and only a space suit
00:30:42left between him and sudden death.
00:31:05I can remember thinking, oh my gosh, what if that hose breaks, it's providing oxygen
00:31:12and all that kind of thing.
00:31:16Of course, he had no foot restraints, no hand restraints, no nothing, except for that gun,
00:31:22which didn't work too well.
00:31:24He was really out there by himself.
00:31:30The Gemini suit, you're in a balloon and bending balloons every time you move.
00:31:36I mean, it was really hard work.
00:31:43People were really amazed at how well he handled himself in space.
00:31:50You're going 17,500 miles an hour and everything's going fine.
00:32:00He was having a great time out there.
00:32:02And of course, time flies when you're in a situation like that.
00:32:06And so what the whole world remembered was McDivitt, you know, looking at the watch and the checklist
00:32:11and saying, hey, it's time to get in here, Ed.
00:32:14And saying, yeah, yeah, basically, yeah, yeah, I'll be with you in a minute.
00:32:18Right?
00:32:18Trying to stay out as long as he could.
00:32:32Yeah, get back in.
00:32:35But then when he started to get back in, McDivitt had to help him.
00:32:40And the suit was puffed up, of course, and the hatch wasn't that big.
00:32:44And it really struggled to get back in.
00:32:49By the time he got back in, it was dark.
00:32:54So when we went to close the hatch, it wouldn't close, it wouldn't lock.
00:32:57And so in the dark, I was trying to fiddle around over on this side where I couldn't see anything,
00:33:03trying to get my club down in this little slot to push the gears together.
00:33:07And why didn't we got that done and got it last?
00:33:15When they closed that hatch, everybody said, God, Lord, man, I'm glad that's over.
00:33:30When we hit the water, we checked around for leaks.
00:33:34I said to Ed, how are you feeling?
00:33:37He said, I'm feeling great.
00:33:38How are you feeling?
00:33:38I said, I'm feeling great too.
00:33:41Guess we aren't going to die.
00:33:59Ed was really the pioneer for American extravehicular activities.
00:34:05It captured the imagination of, I think, the entire public.
00:34:12To go on a parade like that in a city where Dad was born, and of course, he was very
00:34:17proud of being a Texan.
00:34:22The whole city turned out, and that was the best of those kind of parades I've ever been in, in
00:34:28my life.
00:34:29And I'll never forget that.
00:34:33It was really kind of overwhelming.
00:34:36It was like being a movie star, or even more than that.
00:34:43It's indeed a pleasure to be back here and stand on the steps here and share a little bit of
00:34:49the experiences I've had with you.
00:34:52It's wonderful to be back in the state of Texas.
00:34:57We were mobbed wherever we went, and Dad was, you know, besieged by press, and wherever we went, they rolled
00:35:03out the red carpet.
00:35:06It was just kind of crazy.
00:35:44The journey was a two-year crash course in how you go to the moon and get ready for it.
00:35:51It's where we learned how to rendezvous, how to dock, how to do a spacewalk on extravehicular activity, EVA.
00:35:59Not that we knew all the answers yet, but that we were on the right track.
00:36:08The moon is a necessary first step for exploration of the planets.
00:36:12To fly men there and return them safely in this decade is the goal of NASA's Project Apollo.
00:36:18The early missions of Mercury and the experience from Gemini have brought this country to the next major milestone.
00:36:25The first Apollo three-man space flight.
00:36:28These are the men to fly that mission.
00:36:31Astronaut Roger Chaffee.
00:36:33Needless to say, I'm extremely excited about being named to this flight crew, and I think I've got a couple
00:36:39of the greatest men in the world to work with.
00:36:41It's going to be a lot of fun.
00:36:43The senior pilot, Edward White.
00:36:45He will be remembered for his spacewalk.
00:36:48I'm working in the systems right now, getting up to speed, and I think we'll all be looking forward to
00:36:55the flight.
00:36:55And command pilot, Virgil Grissom.
00:36:58One of the original seven astronauts.
00:37:00His third time into space.
00:37:02I realize that this isn't a flight to the moon, but if it were, which two men would go down
00:37:07to the surface of the moon?
00:37:09If it was this crew, I would be me and somebody else.
00:37:23When we heard, you know, that it was Grissom and White and Chaffee, perfect, let's go.
00:37:33That was a wonderful crew.
00:37:34They had three different representatives from three of the different groups.
00:37:40They all clicked together very well.
00:37:50I think our crew and backup crew really worked very, very well together.
00:37:55I mean, we did not have any problems in terms of, you know, compatibility or dealing with things.
00:38:04In spite of the difficult initial relationship with Gus.
00:38:10And we became the best of friends after we were on the crew together for no more than a week
00:38:16or two.
00:38:17It was a very interesting transition.
00:38:55It was a whole new vehicle the first time we'd built a three-person vehicle.
00:39:00North American Aviation was the contractor.
00:39:02And even though they had a lot of experience, they were struggling with the command module.
00:39:07Plus, as we learned things, it was continually modifying the vehicle.
00:39:13So as fast as we were building it, we were changing it.
00:39:17The modifications never stopped, which require you to go back in and undo work you've already done and checked out.
00:39:24And you pull wiring out and you put new wiring in.
00:39:26It was pressure, pressure, pressure.
00:39:33When I came to work for NASA, the covers they had on the floor of the command module and over
00:39:39that wiring were just the standard foam-type protective covers.
00:39:44I don't know how in the world anybody would think that was acceptable in an oxygen environment.
00:39:53The crew was not shy about speaking up.
00:39:58They did not like some things about the spacecraft.
00:40:03They would look at something and say, you know, that switch there, not very handy.
00:40:10It ought to be moved over to this side.
00:40:12Well, the contractor would do it.
00:40:14You know, just at the whim and fancy of an astronaut.
00:40:18It drove the contractors nuts and it drove the program managers even more crazy.
00:40:28Gus was very involved in the hatch design and he insisted that the hatch seal from the inside out so
00:40:35that, you know, in the event of a leak in orbit, you've always got pressure in the cockpit holding that
00:40:39hatch closed, which was a sound reason.
00:40:45We all bitched about the hatch, no question, but it wasn't because of safety. It was because of the difficulty
00:40:51of using the damn thing.
00:40:55Time was passing and we had to meet these goals and Apollo was running late, running slow.
00:41:04They knew they had a problem.
00:41:07Everybody was trying to get to the moon in the decade of the 60s, like President Kennedy had promised.
00:41:17And so they were cutting corners and doing things probably to get there faster.
00:41:24All of us down there are struggling to meet the schedule and we're trying to go faster than we can
00:41:31handle.
00:41:57I was annoyed at the way what became Apollo 1 came out of the plant at Downing.
00:42:04It was not finished.
00:42:07So it was shipped to the Cape with a bunch of spare parts and things to finish it out.
00:42:11And that, of course, caused this whole atmosphere of developing where I would almost call it a first case of
00:42:18bad go fever.
00:42:19The goal fever meaning we've got to keep going, got to keep going, got to keep going.
00:42:24That evening, I debriefed with Gus.
00:42:27I said, if there are any things that go wrong, like a glitch in the electronic circuit, some bad sounds,
00:42:33scrub.
00:42:39They were frustrated, frustrated over the things that were happening to the spacecraft.
00:42:47I mean, I've got a picture of them praying.
00:42:54I look forward a great deal to the first flight.
00:42:57There's a great deal of pride involved in making a first flight.
00:43:01So I think I'm looking forward to the flight with a great deal of anticipation.
00:43:10There's a lot of unknowns, of course, and a lot of problems that could develop or might develop and they'll
00:43:15have to be solved.
00:43:16And that's what we're there for. This is our business to find out if this thing will work for us.
00:43:23You flew on Mercury, you flew on Gemini, now you're flying on Apollo.
00:43:28Does the law of averages so far as the possibility of a catastrophic failure bother you at all, sir?
00:43:34No, you sort of have to put that out of your mind.
00:43:38There's always a possibility that you can have a catastrophic failure.
00:43:43Of course, it's going to happen on any fight. It can happen on the last one as well as the
00:43:47first one.
00:43:47So you just plan as best you can to take care of all of these eventualities and you get a
00:43:56well-trained crew and you go fly.
00:44:11The Apollo 1 test, which we consider to be non-hazardous, ran long because of various problems during the afternoon
00:44:19and then the comm system was really acting up.
00:44:40I was in mission control. I was a flight controller. We had gone round and round and round on the
00:44:47communication issues.
00:44:48We could not get a clear voice. We could not get a clear voice. We couldn't talk to each other.
00:44:53You're pretty good over here, Gus.
00:44:57I can't hear that. I just said.
00:45:01All right.
00:45:06Gus was forever complaining about the countdown and the communications.
00:45:21We knew that there was bad workmanship. We knew that the wires were exposed.
00:45:27We knew that there was a lot of stuff going on in that spacecraft that we didn't like.
00:45:39I don't think any of us recognized the seriousness of the danger we had put the crew in.
00:45:45I am very happy.
00:45:55Hey!
00:45:59I was found a fire on the cockpit.
00:46:05I don't even have bad fire!
00:46:08What?!
00:46:20The whole ball of fire that was inside that vessel came out like sheets of flame.
00:46:28Technicians were burned, papers were set on fire.
00:46:32People were rushing in all directions, trying to get fire extinguishers.
00:46:45Six guys took it in turn, two at a time, to try and get the hatches off.
00:46:52In the process they were burning their hands on the hatches.
00:46:56Then the fire came up the side and filled the whole room with black smoke.
00:47:14And then from then on it was impossible to do anything about it.
00:47:25I've seen death happen various ways, but not like that.
00:47:34Top Space Agency officials are flying to Cape Kennedy tonight to begin the official investigation into what caused a flash
00:47:40fire that killed the nation's first three Apollo astronauts earlier tonight.
00:47:45Lieutenant Colonel Gus Grissom, 42, Lieutenant Colonel Ed White, 36, and Lieutenant Commander Roger Chaffee, 31, all died in moments
00:47:53helplessly trapped inside their spacecraft.
00:48:05It was just a news flash on the radio on the car and I slammed on the brakes and pulled
00:48:12off to the side just before going under the runway.
00:48:15And I just, I had to just sit there, I think for 15 or 20 minutes before I felt I
00:48:24could, I could drive again.
00:48:27I mean, it was such a shock.
00:48:37All at once it was shock, disbelief, confusion.
00:48:44I was more concerned with mom and dad and how they were going to react to this.
00:48:53Surprisingly, I think mom handled it very well.
00:48:57Dad took it very, very hard.
00:49:01I don't think he ever quite got over it.
00:49:09Jan Armstrong was in our driveway when we came pulling up and she got mom and then they just sent
00:49:17me and Ed to our room and we were back there sitting in our rooms.
00:49:21We didn't know what was going on.
00:49:22And then I think at some point mom ended up coming in and I just, yeah, it's the worst thing
00:49:31you could ever possibly hear.
00:49:40That was probably the worst night of my life without a doubt for sure.
00:49:53I remember every single second of that day.
00:50:01And I had to tell my kids.
00:50:21I remember the horses and the carriage bringing the coffin.
00:50:29I remember the horses were there and President Johnson.
00:50:33It's the decent straight!
00:50:39I'm going to go.
00:50:50I was going to go.
00:50:51Get back next to her.
00:50:52Deaf parents.
00:50:52That's why he lived with the truth to her.
00:50:52He didn't know what to my parents and deaf and deaf.
00:50:52He went out he was로 Baile a week and He was bind .
00:51:17Mom did what my dad had wanted.
00:51:20He wanted to be buried at West Point.
00:51:23That was his wish.
00:51:26Mom wanted to keep Dad's wish, so we went that way.
00:51:57You had that feeling of guilt, you had that feeling of remorse, you had that feeling of,
00:52:04my God, why did we ever let that happen?
00:52:06And there's those three men are gone, and you had to deal with that.
00:52:29I was the designated engineer to go into the spacecraft to try to identify where the source
00:52:39of the ignition was.
00:52:48It was a very traumatic situation.
00:52:52But at the same time, my focus and concentration was on my job.
00:53:20All the leaders in both NASA and North American lost their jobs.
00:53:27And they brought in new people.
00:53:29They were all tough guys.
00:53:31They took no rubbish from anybody.
00:53:33They ran a hard shop.
00:53:35They had very little patience with people that screwed up or didn't do the job.
00:53:38And they really took over the program.
00:53:42I thought it was unnecessary to move as many people as we did.
00:53:46That's just the way it was.
00:53:47Politics is tough in a situation like that.
00:54:00In retrospect, we put the story together is that a single spark ignited either Velcro or the T0 netting.
00:54:09And in a 100% oxygen environment, instantly it was like a fireball just going across that spacecraft,
00:54:15all the way to the other side, and it was instantaneous.
00:54:25In Washington, astronauts Bormann, McDevitt, Slayton, Shirah, and Shepard attend a congressional
00:54:30subcommittee hearing probing the Apollo capsule disaster.
00:54:34The questions...
00:54:35We went through a lot of trauma.
00:54:38NASA, unfortunately as a bunch of civilians, didn't know how to take off the black armband.
00:54:44And military people moan inside, cry inside, bleed inside about losing a compatriot.
00:54:50But they wear the black armband to the funeral, and that's it.
00:54:53It's gone.
00:54:54NASA wore the black armband for a year.
00:54:56And we kept saying, look, take the band off, we've got to get back to work.
00:55:00Gus would be the first person to say, let's get on with it.
00:55:12We were right up against it.
00:55:15I mean, the idea that we could recover from that kind of accident, and all of the work
00:55:21that had to be done, rebuilding things, and still make the end of the decade.
00:55:27Man, that was, it was really tight.
00:55:40In a year that was really bad in the United States, in 1968, the riots, Vietnam was going
00:55:47downhill.
00:55:47There was so much negativity in the world.
00:55:52That was really good.
00:55:54In my school.
00:56:07I was really good.
00:56:09I was really bad.
00:56:27Everything had to work right, and miraculously, it did.
00:56:39And then in December of 68, Norman Lovell and Anders took off to the moon.
00:56:48To go from Earth orbit to the moon was a big jump.
00:56:55That was just amazing.
00:57:09And then 11 came along.
00:57:22And one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
00:57:35How exciting.
00:57:38I can remember that like it was yesterday.
00:57:55I took great pride in the fact that we did land on the moon.
00:57:59I think that's what Gus would have wanted.
00:58:03To do it in the time frame that Kennedy asked.
00:58:08I think that probably without the sacrifice of Apollo 1, we would have never made it to the moon in
00:58:15a decade.
00:58:19It was an incredible time.
00:58:24We were doing it for ourselves.
00:58:29We were doing it for our fellow crewmen who weren't around anymore to do it.
00:58:34We were doing it for humanity.
00:58:37We were doing it for everybody.
00:59:19As the missions went on, after Apollo 11, we became more focused on real exploration.
00:59:27And Dave Scott was a very thoughtful guy.
00:59:30He left a tribute on the surface to the fallen astronauts, which included his Apollo 1 crew.
01:00:05The shuttle program, that was the most fantastic flying machine you've ever seen.
01:00:27We have main engine started.
01:00:294, 3, 2, 1, and liftoff, liftoff of the 25th space-level mission, and it has cleared the tower.
01:00:43But NASA, they made some really bad efforts.
01:00:53Challenger was one.
01:00:56Columbia was another one.
01:01:08You are putting your life on the line because you believe in what it is you're doing.
01:01:13I mean, being at the forefront of exploration is something that you're willing to pay a price for.
01:01:40NASA, in a very difficult way, has had to learn some very tough lessons in how you deal with disasters.
01:01:48And they're doing it quite well now.
01:01:49Hopefully, they'll never have to do it again, but they have a strong commitment to supporting the families.
01:01:56Roger B. Chaffee.
01:02:02Virgil Gus Grissom.
01:02:07Edward H. White II.
01:02:12We feel like we're a part of the NASA family, and ultimately, we see our mission as helping them fulfill
01:02:18their mission, which is human exploration, which
01:02:22was the dream of those astronauts who had perished.
01:02:30I'm glad that they got the memorial.
01:02:32It's just something to look at and say, hey, he's remembered.
01:02:38And that's important.
01:02:57People want to remember him.
01:03:01He was the first American to walk in space.
01:03:07Getting over it has been something we've been able to do together.
01:03:12Bonnie has helped me, and I've helped her all that time, you know.
01:03:26Sometimes I see my dad in my dreams.
01:03:30And they're always positive and urging me forward in my life, which I appreciate that he does that every so
01:03:38often.
01:03:47I remember having dreams that he would walk through the front door and, you know, say, hey, I'm home, and
01:03:55he'd just have maybe a bandage on his face or on his hand or something.
01:03:58And, and yeah, I had those dreams quite frequently.
01:04:03You know, they're around watching you and guarding.
01:04:08They're angels.
01:04:33They're angels.
01:04:37It's the light of life.
01:04:38They light one for Gus, one for Ed, and one for my dad.
01:04:42And I think that's just shining their light when those candles are lit.
01:04:58The last time I was there, I looked up at the sky and there were three stars.
01:05:06Long death.
01:05:08And it was really, really special.
01:05:22The Apollo fire is still a very significant event in people's minds.
01:05:28When you look at the history of the space program,
01:05:31the loss of those three guys will always be significant.
01:05:43I don't think the three of them died in vain.
01:05:47I think they were the stepping stones for the rest of the people to go to the moon.
01:06:06And now we have Artemis going back to the moon.
01:06:09This is all a great continuation.
01:06:13Ladies and gentlemen, your Artemis II crew.
01:06:21We're all family, and it's a family of astronauts.
01:06:26Now a family, not just of white Christian men, but a lot of diversity.
01:06:32Men, women, people from all over the world.
01:06:37So, Earth life is moving out into the universe.
01:06:41And Artemis is that next big step.
01:06:47This next step will be better than what we did.
01:06:51Better tools, better technology.
01:06:54The lessons we learned on Apollo 1 have been with us ever since.
01:07:00And I think every time that spacecraft launches, we'll know it's got a little bit of Apollo 1 in it.
01:07:35Well, go ahead.
01:07:44Though the days are long
01:07:47Twilight sings a song
01:07:51Of the happiness that used to be
01:07:58I see you in my dreams
01:08:07How would you end my dream
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