Because the cabin had been filled with a pure oxygen atmosphere at normal pressure for the test and there had been many hours for the oxygen to permeate all the material in the cabin, the fire spread rapidly and the astronauts had no chance to get the hatch open.
The most significant hardware change to the Apollo spacecraft as a result of the fire involved replacing the difficult-to-open three-piece hatch with a unified hatch that could be opened from inside or outside the spacecraft in three seconds.
Cause of death
According to the Board, Grissom suffered severe third-degree burns on over one-third of his body and his spacesuit was mostly destroyed. White suffered third-degree burns on almost half of his body and a quarter of his spacesuit had melted away.
But the real horror came when rescuers reached Apollo 1, five minutes after Chaffee's initial shout. The command module, dimly lit by flickering flashlights, was a scene of devastation. Grissom, White and Chaffee were dead. None had suffered life-threatening burns, all having succumbed to asphyxiation.
The investigation later revealed that the hatch opening procedures were way too difficult and took too long to be executed in an emergency. Furthermore, the inward-opening hatch was impossible to open under any pressure higher than normal atmospheric pressure — and the fire had boosted the cabin pressure significantly.
"Fire!" Then a garbled transmission, and then the final plea: "Get us out!"
Perhaps the Apollo 1 fire could have been prevented if the United States had not been caught up in a race to get to the moon. On the other hand, it's important to remember that NASA was attempting to do something that had never been done before, and that comes with an inherent risk, Chiao noted.
Fueled by an exhaustive and fast-burning oxygen-rich atmosphere, the Apollo 1 command capsule ignited from the inside out. Within minutes its crew, astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, lost their lives to the blaze.
However, four days prior to launch, it was determined that Mattingly had been exposed to measles and had no immunity. In order to avoid the possibility of Mattingly becoming sick during the flight, he was replaced by his back up, Jack Swigert.
Apollo 1 – 1967
A flash fire broke out in the command module of Apollo 204 during a simulated launch at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, killing astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee of asphyxiation.
The Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after lift-off on STS-51-L at an altitude of 15 kilometers (49,000 ft).
Pure oxygen was used in the case of the Apollo I because the alternative of using mixed gases did not allow for a breathable atmosphere. In addition, the fire safety checks assumed that there would be no flammable hazards that could pose any threat to the astronauts.
At 16.7 psi, fireproofing was impossible, but engineers devised a solution: Before launch, the command module cabin would be temporarily filled with a mixture of 40 percent nitrogen and 60 percent oxygen that would prevent the spread of a fire but would not pose any medical risks to the crew.
During a test on the launch pad, however, a fire erupted and rapidly asphyxiated all three astronauts. Some of the contributing factors to their deaths included a pure oxygen atmosphere that accelerated a fire, and a hatch that proved impossible for the astronauts to open quickly, although the causes were complex.
Two Apollo missions were failures: a 1967 cabin fire killed the entire Apollo 1 crew during a ground test in preparation for what was to be the first crewed flight; and the third landing attempt on Apollo 13 was aborted by an oxygen tank explosion en route to the Moon, which disabled the CSM Odyssey's electrical power ...
On the final spacewalk ever, Harrison Schmitt was photographed standing next to a huge lunar boulder by his astronaut partner Eugene Cernan, the last person to walk on the moon.
Haise and Jack Swigert were the first people from Group 5 to fly in space. During this flight Haise developed a urinary tract infection and later kidney infections. These caused him to be in pain for most of the trip.
During the Apollo 13 mission, the LM environmental control system provided a habitable environment for about 83 hours (57:45 to 141:05 GET). Cabin temperature remained low due to low electrical power levels. This caused crew discomfort during much of this period, with cabin temperatures ranging between 49°F and 55 °F.
Update: A typical Apollo blackout lasted about 4 minutes. Due to a shallower re-entry path, Apollo 13's blackout was calculated to last about 4.5 minutes. Flight director Gene Kranz's logs show that it took about 6 minutes to re-establish contact with Apollo 13.
The cabin was pressurized with 16.7 pounds per square inch (psi) of 100 percent oxygen, a pressure slightly greater than one atmosphere. With everything just as it would be on February 21, the crew went through a full simulation of countdown and launch.
During a complete Apollo mission, astronauts were exposed to widely varying radiation sources. These included the Van Allen belts, cosmic rays, neutrons, and other [106] subatomic particles created in high energy collisions of primary particles with spacecraft materials.
Even Schirra, who was photographed smoking during training for Apollo 7, eventually gave it up. As he wrote in his autobiography, Schirra's Space: I knew I had no choice but to quit smoking before the Apollo flight. To light up is to burn up in a pure oxygen atmosphere—it's as simple as that.
Grissom, the second American in space and commander of the first two-man Gemini mission reported a strange “sour buttermilk” odor in the oxygen flowing into his suit, prompting an unplanned hold in the countdown.
Because the cabin had been filled with a pure oxygen atmosphere at normal pressure for the test and there had been many hours for the oxygen to permeate all the material in the cabin, the fire spread rapidly and the astronauts had no chance to get the hatch open.
The Apollo 11 capsule's aluminum shielding amounted to a wall of lead about 7 mm thick [4]. These space suits did not contain lead, the standard material used to protect patients receiving X-rays.