Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chafee
Grissom, White, And Chafee were the crew selected by NASA to fly the first Apollo mission in 1967, after years of success with the Mercury and Gemini programs. Although Chafee had not yet flown in space, the other two had spaceflight experience, with Grissom having flown in both the Gemini and Mercury programs. Edward White had, during Gemini, being the first American to have left his space capsule while in orbit, called by NASA an extravehicular activity or EVA, and by the press and other media a spacewalk.
Chafee was no stranger to high-stress flights, however. During the years leading up to and throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Chafee was one of the pilots of U2 aircraft which detected the missiles and other Soviet activity on the island. Still, Chafee was only selected for Apollo One after the original choice, Donn Eisele, injured a shoulder in training and was forced to undergo surgery. Chafee was a Navy pilot prior to astronaut training, White and Grissom flew for the United States Air Force.
The Apollo One mission was to have been a test of the spacecraft lasting up to two weeks, depending on system and astronaut performance. Rather than testing the massive Saturn V launch vehicle, which would be used for a lunar launch, the test was to have used the smaller Saturn IB to place the Apollo Command and Service module in earth orbit. The test did not include a Lunar Module either. The main purpose of the flight was to work on communications and tracking systems, and crew living conditions in the previously never manned Command Module.
Various communications problems occurred during on-ground simulations and tests at Cape Canaveral. The crew had expressed concerns about the Command Module to NASA and to the prime contractor, and the mission fell behind schedule. Originally scheduled for late 1966, delays in development and problems in testing pushed the flight back to the scheduled third week of February 1967. On January 21, 1967, the crew was in the capsule, in their space suits, performing a test when one of the astronauts, likely Roger Chafee, reported the presence of a fire. Within seconds an explosion cracked the capsule from within, and the heat prevented personnel outside the capsule from opening the hatch.
All three of the astronauts were killed, the first fatalities for Americans in a vehicle intended for space flight, and although it occurred on the ground the American public was stunned at what was perceived as America’s first failure in its space program. NASA’s image of infallibility was shattered. The accident was caused by an electrical short which triggered the fire, fed by the pure oxygen atmosphere. All three astronauts were badly burnt, but the burns were found to have occurred after death from asphyxiation. The heat was great enough to have melted portions of their space suits.