| THE APOLLO PROGRAM | ||
The Apollo Program began on a sadly tragic note. On January 27, 1967, astronauts Virgil Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, underwent a training exercise in the Apollo 1 command module. During the procedure, a spark ignited a nylon net, and a fire quickly spread. Poisonous carbon monoxide fumes killed all three astronauts. It was almost an instant replay of the death of Russian cosmonaut Bondarenko in 1961. After the tragedy, NASA made two simple modifications to its spacecraft: an emergency escape hatch and a two-gas system to dilute the oxygen with nitrogen during ground tests. |
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