40 Years Ago Today

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Science
NASA Marks Anniversary of Apollo Deaths
Former space commander and moonwalker John Young lays a flower at the dead astronauts memorial at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Jan. 27, 2007, paying tribute to three fellow astronauts who died in the Apollo 1 fire 40 years ago. The three astronauts, Virgil Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee perished during a ground test less than three weeks before their scheduled launch. Grissom was the second American to fly in space in 1961. He flew aboard the Gemini 3 spacecraft in 1965, along with John Young. (AP Photo/Stefano Coledan)


By MIKE SCHNEIDER, The Associated Press
Jan 27, 2007 3:33 PM (1 hr 20 mins ago)
Current rank: # 26 of 18,749 articles
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - It was supposed to be a routine launch pad test.

But from the Apollo 1 command module at Pad 34 came a panicked voice saying, "Fire in the cockpit."

Exactly 40 years later, the three Apollo astronauts who were killed in that flash fire were remembered Saturday for paving the way for later astronauts to be able to travel to the moon. The deaths of Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee forced NASA to take pause in its space race with the Soviet Union and make design and safety changes that were critical to the agency's later successes.

"I can assure you if we had not had that fire and rebuilt the command module ... we could not have done the Apollo program successfully," said retired astronaut John Young, who flew in Gemini 3 with Grissom in 1965. "So we owe a lot to Gus, and Rog and Ed. They made it possible for the rest of us to do the almost impossible."

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