Lest We Forget

40 years ago today, astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Virgil 'Gus' Grissom entered the Apollo I space capsule for a test.

Once they were in and strapped down, the capsule was sealed and the air was replaced with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. Unknown to them, the quality control for this project was pretty much nonexistent. There were electrical wires in the capsule where the non-conductive coating was worn away.

When the test began, these wires produced sparks which started a flash fire. It took the NASA team almost ten minutes to open the capsule, but the three astronauts were killed within the first ten seconds of the fire.

They were the first American astronauts to lose their lives in the project, and is the reason that when the Apollo missions restarted they began with Apollo Seven. They gave their lives for what they believed in, and I don't feel they ever got the recognition they deserved - especially compared to tomorrow, which is the anniversary of the Challenger blow-up.