The Space Race: Difference between revisions

In 1967, the US Apollo missions began; the very first, Apollo I, a ground test, ended in disaster when a fire broke out in the capsule. Early Command Modules were defective and had faulty wiring. Nominally everything was fireproof, but they'd failed to account for the fact that the capsule had been filled with a pure-oxygen atmosphere at greater than sea-level pressure for testing. The three astronauts (Mercury veteran Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward White - who had made the first US spacewalk - and space rookie Roger B. Chaffee) all died in the capsule due to smoke inhalation. One of the reasons was that the hatch wouldn't open (it opened ''inward'', which meant that the increased pressure held it shut) and couldn't be blown off by explosive bolts in an emergency ([[Nightmare Fuel|as the flames spread in the capsule, the astronauts attempted to unbolt it from its mountings]]). Ironically, Grissom himself was responsible for this feature. During his Mercury flight, there had been problems with the hatch. His capsule was lost in the Atlantic and he nearly drowned when the hatch prematurely blew open while it was still in the water. Thus, a "safer" version had been installed on Apollo 1. The problems were quickly rectified, however.

 

 

Meanwhile, the Americans were back on track with their Apollo program. A series of manned and unmanned test flights of various lunar hardware culminated in December of 1968 with the Apollo 8 lunar flyby that performed all functions of a Moon mission except the lunar landing itself. Next year saw the final fruition of the program with Apollo 11; [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got to walk on the lunar surface in the Mare Tranquillitatis on July 20th, 1969.]]