From NASA, a remembrance of the first tragedy to strike America’s space program:
On January 27, 1967, Apollo 1’s crew–Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee–was killed when a fire erupted in their capsule during testing. Apollo 1 was originally designated AS-204 but following the fire, the astronauts’ widows requested that the mission be remembered as Apollo 1 and following missions would be numbered subsequent to the flight that never made it into space.
January 27th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
40th Anniversary
Below the Beltway and Captain’s Quarters both note that today is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire. It took the lives of three astronauts: Virgil Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. My first real memories of the