Virgil "Gus" Grissom, born April 3, 1926, was an astronaut in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs.
His first flight was aboard Mercury-Redstone 4, nicknamed the Liberty Bell 7 in July 1961. The flight lasted 15 minutes, 30 seconds and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. Explosive bolts on the hatch cover accidentally blew and the capsule sank. Grissom was in danger of drowning but was rescued by a US Navy helicopter.
His second flight was aboard Gemini III (nicknamed Molly Brown) with fellow astronaut John Young. They made three orbits and splashed down just under 5 hours later.
Grissom passed away January 27, 1967 in the Apollo 1 capsule during a routine launch test. A fire broke out inside the pure oxygen atmosphere, killing him and fellow astronauts Roger Chaffee and Ed White.
Donn Fulton Eisele, born June 23, 1930, went into space only once aboard Apollo 7. He traveled with fellow astronauts Wally Schirra and Walt Cunningham. The mission was to test the spacecraft's ability to travel to the moon, since modifications had been made to the capsule after the Apollo 1 tragedy the year before.
The mission was a success but during the flight, Wally Schirra developed a head cold. In space, without the pull of gravity, one's sinuses cannot drain as they do on Earth, thus Schirra became irritable. Eisele contracted the same head cold and Cunningham might have to (or not, depending upon which story you listen to). Upon re-entry, NASA demanded the crew wear their helmets but Schirra said they would not be able to clear their congestion and their ear drums might burst.
Schirra made the final decision not to wear helmets and the crew landed safely, but none of them went into space after that.
Eisele died of a heart attack in December 1987 during a business trip to Tokyo.
Valentin Bondarenko, born February 16, 1937 in Ukraine, was an ill-fated cosmonaut in the early years of the Soviet space program. He attended an Air Force college and became a pilot, rising to the rank of Senior Lieutenant in 1959.
The next year, he was selected as a cosmonaut in 1960. On March 23, 1961, Day 10 of a 15-day endurance test, Bondarenko was in a low pressure altitude chamber with an atmosphere of at least 50% oxygen. He removed some monitoring biosensors attached to his body, and washed off his skin with a cotton ball that had been soaked in alcohol. He threw the cotton ball away but it landed on a hot plate, which he was using to brew tea. The cotton ignited. Bondarenko tried to smother the flames but the sleeves of his coveralls were wool, and also caught fire in the oxygen-rich atmosphere.
It took the monitoring doctor almost half an hour to open the chamber because of the pressure difference. By that time, Bondarenko's clothing had burned until all the oxygen had been depleted and he had suffered third-degree burns over most of his body, only the soles of his feet were spared, since his boots had protected them from the flames.
Yuri Gagarin served as a 'deathwatch officer' for several hours until Bondarenko died of shock 16 hours after the accident. Less than three weeks later, Gagarin made his his historic Vostok 1 flight.
The news and circumstances of Bondarenko's death were not released at the time and the Soviets even went so far as to air-brush him out of pictures, since he had already appeared in group photos and films. Details of his death were finally made public about 1980.
There has been speculation that if the Soviets had released information surrounding Bondarenko's death in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, the same fate would not have happened to the Apollo 1 crew. However, NASA was fully aware of the dangers of 100% oxygen atmospheres by 1966.
So if NASA knew about the dangers, why did they not do something to prevent it? Did they gamble with the astronauts' lives? Did they feel it wasn't necessary to change the atmosphere, because they thought something like that would never happen?
What do you think?
As with Chaffee, Apollo 1 astronaut whose birthday we celebrated yesterday, a crater on the far side of the moon has been named for Bondarenko.
Roger Chaffee, born February 15, 1935 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was an astronaut, who perished in the Apollo 1 fire, January 27, 1967. He had risen to the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy and was selected as an astronaut in 1963.
He was capsule communicator for the Gemini 3 and Gemini 4 missions, before being assigned to the Apollo 1 mission, planned for launch February 21, 1967. During a routine pre-launch test on Janary 27 with fellow astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Ed White, a fire broke out in the capsule. The flame was fueled by the oxygen rich atmosphere and the burning materials released toxic gases which contributed to the astronauts' death.
As a result of the tragedy, the capsule went under a significant redesign.
Chaffee has been memorialized in many ways, including naming a crater on the far side of the moon after him.
Another classic and probably one of the most beloved episodes of The Twilight Zone, The Invaders, aired January 27, 1961. Starring the amazing Agnes Moorehead, it was the only episode to have one character and no dialogue.
Ms. Moorehead played a lonely woman in remote house who is terrorized by miniature aliens, after finding a spaceship on her roof. They hit her with ray guns that give her radiation burns, the cut her hand and her foot with a knife, but she eventually gets the upper hand.
The episode was written by Richard Matheson, directed by Douglas Heyes (he is the voice of the alien commander at the end) and scored by Jerry Goldsmith.
According to imdb.com, one of the alien astronauts' names was Grissom, as in Virgil "Gus" Grissom, who was killed in the Apollo 1 fire, which occurred exactly six years to the day after this episode aired.
Apollo 7 Crew: Don F. Eisele, Walter M. Schirra, R. Walter Cunningham
Apollo 7, launched October 11, 1968, was the first manned mission of the Apollo program and the first time the U.S. sent men into space since Gemini XII in 1966. The fire that killed Apollo 1's crew put the space program on hold for almost two years.
Shortly after launch, Commander Schirra began to experience symptoms of a cold. In zero-gravity, it is much harder to expel mucous from the sinuses. As with virtually everyone else, being sick puts us in a grouchy mood, and that's what happened to Schirra. Then his foul mood brought the rest of the crew down and they started snipping at Mission Control. Although the mission was considered a success, it has been since dubbed "mutiny in space" because of the tensions between the crew and Mission Control.
Three astronauts, Lt. Col. Virgil I. Grissom, Lt. Col. Edward H. White, the astronaut who had performed the first United States extravehicular activity during the Gemini program; and Roger B. Chaffee, an astronaut preparing for his first space flight, died during a test when a fire swept through the capsule. They died of cardiac arrest brought on by high levels of carbon monoxide.
The review board charged with investigating the accident identified five major factors which combined to cause the fire and the astronauts' deaths:
An ignition source most probably related to exposed electrical wiring and leak-prone plumbing
Pure oxygen atmosphere at high pressure
Flammable materials in the cabin
A hatch cover which could not be quickly removed at high pressure
Inadequate emergency preparedness
The Apollo program was grounded for a while until significant changes to the design of the capsule could be conducted.
