Word: apollo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Mask of Apollo, Renault...
Since the flash fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee last January, the Apollo program has been at a mournful standstill. Eyes previously trained on the moon have turned during the past three months to minutely attentive investigation of what went wrong, and why. "The accident makes you take a good hard look at your strengths and weaknesses," explained a NASA man last week. "But there is no intention in all this to find fall guys...
Perhaps not, but next day NASA abruptly announced a top-level, "accident-related" shakeup. Brilliant, energetic Joe Shea, 40, the Apollo spacecraft program manager, was shifted from Houston to Washington, where he will become the deputy associate administrator for manned space flight. His job went to the deputy director of the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center, George Low. NASA insisted that Shea was not being demoted. But even Shea's friends were unsure what his appointment as aide to Manned Space Flight Chief Dr. George Mueller meant. As one of them put it, "If Joe stays in Washington...
...prove their thesis, NASA engineers took a test Apollo spacecraft in Houston and duplicated the conditions aboard Apollo 204 during the tragedy-without humans. The suspect bundles were put in place and made to malfunction. The fire started. It remained invisible for five or six seconds and then came into view from Chaffee's seat. During the real fire, it was at this moment that Chaffee sounded the alarm. From then on, the pattern and intensity of the test fire followed almost to the second the pattern and intensity of the fire aboard Apollo 204 as reconstructed by scientists...
...first manned test flight will just be going up then, a full year late. That does not necessarily mean a year's delay in trying for the moon, however. Since spacecraft, rocket and other production will continue throughout the coming year despite the lack of manned missions, Apollo equipment will be all set and ready to go-even allowing for last-minute modifications-almost as soon as each previous flight is ended. And the moon bid could come as soon as the third manned Apollo mission...