The Apollo Fire and Its Long Term Effects on NASA

America's first fatal space accident, the Apollo fire, took place on January 27, 1967, 45 years ago. The fire killed Virgil Grissom, Ed White, and Ed Chaffee doing a test of the Apollo capsule on the launch pad.

According to Space.Com, the Apollo fire caused profound changes in the way spacecraft are designed and in the safety culture at NASA that exists to this day.

What happened during the Apollo Fire?

The review board report on the Apollo Fire determined that an electrical arc of some kind ignited flammable material in the Apollo capsule. The pure oxygen environment contributed to the rapid spread of the fire. Because of a design flaw of the hatch, which had to be opened inward, the crew was unable to affect an escape before the toxic fumes of the fire rendered them unconscious. Cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation with thermal burns as a contributing factor.

What happened after the fire?

Besides the investigation of the NASA review board, the Apollo fire was examined by the Senate Committee on Aeronautics and Space Sciences. According to an article on the Apollo Fire at the Arlington National Cemetery site, Senator Walter Mondale raised some vaguely sourced accusations of NASA and contractor negligence based on something called the Phillips Report. Mondale would later become infamous as a vigorous opponent of the human space flight program, as well as President Carter's vice president and a candidate for president.

Acting on recommendations of the review board, NASA redesigned the space capsule. Among the design changes were the removal of flammable materials and its replacement with non extinguishing materials, the change of the cabin atmosphere to a nitrogen/oxygen mix, a fix of numerous wiring problems, and a redesign of the hatch to allow it to be blown almost instantly, allowing rapid crew egress.

What were the long term effects?

Since the accident took place on the ground, NASA was able to build an Apollo spacecraft that successfully took astronauts to the moon multiple times in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, the fire did not provide a permanent fix to NASA's "safety culture" and the tendency to sacrifice safety in consideration of financial and time constraints. The two space shuttle accidents, Challenger and Columbia, were directed attributed to a relaxation of safety considerations. For example, according to MSNBC, a report in the wake of the loss of Columbia attributed those considerations to the loss of the shuttle, just as they were a factor in the loss of Challenger 17 years earlier. The tension between lean budgets NASA has subsisted on and the need to launch space missions safely, on a regular basis, is a problem that has yet to be resolved.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker . He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times, and The Weekly Standard.