50 years ago tomorrow, we were racing to the Moon full-speed. But when the Apollo 1 spacecraft burst into flames and killed three astronauts, our resolve faced a terrible test.
The fact that he says “two of these astronauts were genuine space heroes, while not including Chaffee, what some dont realize is just because he may not have been as known as Grissoms and White, he also still took the liberty to give up his life without knowing. Not only 2, but all 3 were GENUINE heroes.
died from toxic fumes, this report says. I don't suppose cabin temps reaching 2,500 degrees in a matter of seconds that caused third degree burns over 1/4 to 1/2 of their bodies had anything to do with it. I just stumbled upon a video of this subject, i had heard of 3 astronauts perishing in a launch pad fire before and never gave it much thought, but I have this morbid curiosity to look back at tragedies like the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald or the crash of flight 255 and look at all the evidence and try to figure out what happened, or the two shuttle disasters and learn what happened. So I stumbled on 'the horrible Apollo 1 disaster' and have looked into this. One of the photos shocked and disturbed me,, and it takes a great deal to do that, working in the trauma unit in the ER of a local hospital . The pictures of the three bodies. In 2 of them, the two men that got out of the chairs they were strapped in, the face shields were either fogged and affected by the fire/heat that you cannot see their faces. However, the poor guy who stayed strapped in his seat, you can see his face. His eyes, what appears to be a charred noseand face, and the whites ofhis upper and lower teeth in a mouth that was agasp, wide open like he was screaming in utter agony. The look frozen onhis face and in his eyes was one of utter pain, terror, and anguish. I am surprised they allowed that photo to be published. Also, they never did discover exactly where the fire originated but a spark under 29 psi would have been like an explosion and the whole cabin was pressurized with pure oxygen as wellas their suits and bodies as the goal was to remove any chance of any nitrogen entering the astronauts to avoid this condition known as the 'bends' (nitrogen bubbles) from forming in the blood stream. But at least this clip does not cut to commercials like the 'rush to launch' challenger documentary. And who would want their products or services associated with tragedies like this? I mean, it's like they are talking about 6 of the 7 emergency oxygen masks being turned on and how the crew of the shuttle died on impact or some other detail and they cut to some car commercial, or some other clown telling us the world is coming to an end , etc While I may not disagree, who wants their ads to come during this revelations that some may view as disturbing??
@@kingbee48185 You mean they consider how sponsors will react when developing television programming? I thought that ended in the 1950s when cigarette companies quit sponsoring entire programs. They do that with news and documentaries too?
May I ask what is your avatar pic? It's really cool I like it. I know it is going to sound ignorant of me, I'm jot nearly as smart as allot of yall but is that some kinda diagram of sorts regarding the earth and/or moon? I like the color 2.
@@KusHNinja I made it in Microsoft Paint or something like that. It's a black circle inside a green square, but RU-vid makes everything a circle, so now it's a circle inside a circle.
They didn't die of smoke. The audio from the cockpit and what they found when they opened that door was horrifying. The screams from the audio and one of the men clearly screaming, "We're burning up!", followed by a scream of agony discounts that. WHen they opened the door, they were almost unidentifiable, and they were melted to the cockpit and they couldn't move the corpses.
Actually sir you're very wrong, they died from a heart attack due to the fire that melted the oxygen tubes that fed them lean air causing them to breath carbon monoxide, their corpses were lter burned in the capsule but they didn't die of burning
@@DavidHernandez-kc1el yes but carbon monoxide takes more than just seconds to kill someone, in full truth, the cabin was put in 100% air, and a single spark could have the ENTIRE thing to burn up. Then again the carbon monoxide still could have been a threat.
@@mr.megalodonmegalodon758 I was thinking even at high concentration, it takes a few minutes for CO2 to get you. I was thinking it had to be the fire, based on the tapes
@@lovelylilac0 yeah, see, that's supposed to be taken care of before people die. better yet, MAN can stop pretending they can survive without their mother earth. she made you. you are tied to her. deal with it bros.
@@legalfictionnaturalfact3969 people go to space for the sake of exploration, to understand our universe better and study about other planets for whether not it can support life.
Well, he did say it was “one of NASA’s darkest times,” and, “this was a national tragedy.” But the comment about them being, “only a memory,” is not correct.
Grissom reported a sour smell in the oxygen that was from a spark/arc able to happen from the teflon coated insulation having broken. There were several wires which through being moved over and over cracked their insulation. Had this not occurred the wiring likely would have been checked over before flight and caught. However the plugs out test was not considered life threatening. So the test was allowed to continue after only an hour of checking, despite no cause for the odor in astronaut Grissom's oxygen being found.
Manny the cabin was filled with pressurised oxygen in response to previous incidents where crew in other vessels and aircraft had become disoriented due to nitrogen narcosis. There had even been a case of an astronaut becoming confused due to his pure oxygen breathing circuit being contaminated with nitrogen from the cabin atmosphere.
@@1986lazarus 78% of the air we breathe is nitrogen. And the solution to the Apollo 1 fire was to fill the cabin with 60% oxygen and 40% nitrogen, which gets purged during the launch. So I am confused by your comment. They had used 100% oxygen at that pressure all throughout the Mercury and Gemini programs without an incident, so they never thought twice about it, which was an obvious oversight.
100% pressurised oxygen was not cheap. There would have been a life critical reason to justify the cost. Also, it's cheaper to take pure oxygen and reinfuse CO2-scrubbed air for re-breathing than it is to take loads of nitrogen-rich air and jettison every exhaled breath. After all, that's why mountaineers sometimes use rebreathers - to lighten the load and improve oxygen delivery efficiency. And SCUBA divers use it to reduce nitrogen narcosis (which happens at high pressures exclusively), as well as to reduce the total amount of air that needs to be taken. As for pressurisation - that's necessary because even in a pressurised cabin, air pressure drops with launch so oxygen under pressure at sea level becomes oxygen at normal pressure in space.
@@malcolmabram2957 How else is he supposed to say it in 60 seconds? If you want him to pause and talk with more emotion then it's gonna have to be longer than 60 seconds, but then this video wouldn't exist.
And relegates the memory of the Apollo astronauts to “a memory”, perhaps not realizing whoever wrote that script made a pathetic choice of words; no one from the heroic space age-certainly not Grissom’s, White’s and Chaffee’s colleagues nor the engineers and flight directors working with them would disagree that the lost astronauts knew they were testing a flawed spacecraft but continued with the “plugs out” test-the tragic end of which all at NASA feel taught the hard lessons necessary to achieve the success Apollo finally had.
@@carlatteniese2 Couldn't agree more. Whoever wrote this script indeed made a pathetic choice of words, and they are probably clueless and ignorant to the fact that they did anything wrong.
I always thought that the reason they couldn't open the hatch was because it opened inwards so the pressure would stop them Either way the pressure stopped them but If you're up to it, if you'd like I'd listen to the original recordings, you don't have to honestly and depending on circumstance they can be really sad to downright spine-chilling But still don't if you get easily upset by this
bro get ur facts straight, the fire burned through the pipes feeding them oxygen causing them to inhale very dangerous chemicals like carbon monoxide causing them to have a heart attack and die instantly, of course, while they were dead the fire kept going and fused the nylon and the seats so they just found three melted blobs
@@DavidHernandez-kc1el But bro, they talked to mission control that there is a fire and that they have to exit the simulator. The mission control also heard there screams so they can’t die in seconds, right?
@@DavidHernandez-kc1el Carbon monoxide won't kill you that fast. But there are other toxic things that can kill you (thankfully) very fast, if you have to go on a burning capsule-- in a few breaths at the most. CO2 takes a good 5 min or so.
It's actually "WE'RE BURNING UP" not "OPEN HER UP". Either way the autopsy report stating that they did not suffer or feel pain during the ordeal and that they just 'went off to sleep' or 'asphyxiated' (it takes longer than 17 seconds to asphyxiate, even when breathing cyanide) is a conscience-salving falsehood that completely squelches the reality claimed by Chaffee literally with his final recorded words.
"Nasa would indeed put men on the moon but by then the apollo 1 crew were what they are today, memories" Guy trying to roast the poor guys (no pun intended)
A confined space like that, no wonder the smoke killed them. Fire filled up and ate the oxygen, melted their breathing tubes and exposed them to the toxic smoke amd gases. As someone who has lost a friend to this exact thing, I can imagine how fast that must have killed them
i didnt read the part saying "60 secound know it all" so i was A : impressed that he got to the point imidiatly. B : had everything i needed to know within 59 secounds.
In the 1980's, two different elementary school teachers taught us that the reason was because of flammable glue used on Velcro products. Did anyone else get told that? I have never heard anyone else mention it.
100% oxygen made possible breathing while having significant lower interior capsule air pressure - this did save a lot of weight on the structure of the capsule. All flights with Mercury and Gemini programs been done with 100% without incidents.
What a horribly narrated segment. It's like you've watched too many meme-filled video game clips and think that's how all RU-vid videos should be narrated.
I'd love to know and hear their last transmission. and film of the fire. these men were icons. the faulty wiring was the fault of some contractor. who was he/it. he should've been sent to prison for life.
Why was there malintent or high risks of dangers being knowingly created by said contractor? Bc punishment for accidents just doubles the pain and hardship, and even under circumstances of gross negligence there needs to be a benefit to any legal consequences other than satisfying people's lust for retribution (which in itself is a detriment that needs to be weighed in) ... Especially since when a person wants to end a man's life for a complete accident, you sometimes wonder if theyd smack a kid for, say accidentally dropping his pet hamster...but only if the hamster was hurt. If not, well no harm no foul I guess? I mean consequences for things can still happen without getting the law involved...
@@ChadDidNothingWrong you are spot on. The "blame culture" does little to learn from mistakes. It also creates a culture that lacks trust, and a culture where mistakes are hidden. I was an aircraft engineer for 15 years and aviation is pretty good in most places at having a "just culture" where lessons are to be learned from mistakes and actions taken to ever prevent something similar. There ARE consequences in the event of something, but they are weighed up by how much of a factor they were. For example, if I did some wiring that started a fire in the cockpit, they would first find out how the wiring came to be the source of ignition. 1-What was the failure mode? Overheating, poor installation, overloading, misuse, chafing/pinching. 2-Were the designed material specs adequate? Current rating, wire gauge, circuit protection etc. 3-Were the materials themselves in good condition? How long had had wire been stored for before use, and in what conditions. 4-How had the process of installation and testing been carried out? 5-What inspections took place? 6-What organisational pressures may have been involved? Too short a time, too little resources, overworked installer or designer. 7-what environmental factors? Was the work area adequate, was the lighting adequate? Were the tools adequate and in good working order? 8-Personal factors. Was the installer distracted? Were they ill? Had they been sleeping OK? Did they have troubles outside of work? Are they actually medically fit for the job? (Eyesight, colourblindness etc) All the above factors would be considered. All things found would be actioned to prevent reoccurrence. The installer may need re training, might need to monitor their fatigue, might need disciplinary action, or even might need their work inspecting every time. The company might have to increase time for installations, increase headcount, buy better tooling, reduce/cap working hours, increase inspections. Could the materials have been stored differently? Or had a shorter shelf life. Then, the design may need to be looked at, could there be a different method to use, or material? Could the wiring be better protected from damage? Lots of things to learn, overall the installer would only face employment or legal consequences in line with their involvement. So, only willful negligence or rule breaking would result in dismissal or a lawsuit. Making a mistake, would result in lesser consequences such as disciplinary warning, re training or increased inspections for example. A VERY healthy safety culture where lessons are learned. Now I'm an engineer in the rail industry. It does not have that culture.... People get sacked for genuine mistakes. This in turn has lead to a culture of fear and mistrust, possibly even people hiding mistakes. NOT learning from mistakes just means that somebody else could do the same thing again with the same, or worse outcome.
That's what the official autopsy report says , that they died of smoke inhalation , I call bullshit , the released audio is quite telling, you can hear Roger Chaffee yelling that he's burning up then there is a bone chilling scream as he's burning alive .
@@legalfictionnaturalfact3969 YOU AGAIN? stop commenting bro, the skin is tough, it usually takes about 4 minutes to fully kill you. listen to the audiotapes. they stopped talking very quickly because they died from a heart attack after inhaling too much carbon monoxide, we're talking about a tiny capsule with fire with 100% pure oxygen, don' be stupid, you were not part of the autopsy, you're not a doctor just a stupid kid making assumptions of things not even in his era. you were not there shut up bro
Look up how re-breathers work, and why re-breathers are used. Also look up why air to be breathed in space must be hyperbaric at sea level pre-launch. All the answers are there.
It would have been nice if the person doing the voice-over had taken a breath between talking. It would have been much easier to take in and appreciate.
0:46 Nope. Much worse. In a pressurized pure O2 atmosphere everything burns. The suit, the seat, wiring insulation, human flesh and bone. Fire burned them in their seats, pressure blew out the hatch, fire consumed everything combustible. Safety crew was there in 30 seconds but they were already dead. Photos are not pleasant, and I warned you before you Google them or the audio.
I wonder if the nutty, creepy moon landing deniers believe that Grissom, White and Chaffee's death screams on Apollo One were recorded in a studio since the final transmissions are now online?
The smoke didn't kill them cause they had oxygen equipment on. So they literally just burned until they died or their equipment failed. Horrible death basically cooked them in an oven
If I was the one, than I would probably feel bad my entire life. I feel sorry for whoever was responsible, even tho I doubt that there was only one person involved in the checks and saftey of the project. But of course this should not have happened at any point. R.I.P.
It was never supposed to. It was always just what they called a plugs out ground test - meaning it was just a test of the systems while completely on internal power. Not connected to the tower electrically. Or rather - I think it actually was connected, but the conditions of being on internal power were simulated. It wasn't going anywhere.
Don't really understand all the negative comments regarding this video: history, by definition, can be little more than a memory, and far worse has happened than three volunteers dying in a fire. Grow up America, it's time to put your big pants on now. RIP to every man, woman, and child who has served the greater good.
NASA Management learned Squat from that Fire, 19 yrs later the same Mentality doomed Challenger, and by 2003, they still hadn't learned, and Columbia was lost
that's honestly false, they redesigned the entire Apollo capsule and risked losing the race to the moon to ensure that no more astronauts would die. Challenger and Columbia were entirely different incidents.
This is the second time I have heard somebody say this under two incredibly tragic spacecraft accidents and I have never seen any bit of proof about that information.
Not really. The capsules had 100% 02, but pressurized to only about 5psi. The fire on the pad was at 16psi giving a much much more volitile environment
