Word: grissoms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Critical Changes. Strapped into the conical command module, trapped by hatches impossible to open, Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee scarcely had a chance. Now Apollo has only one hatch, and it can be opened with a ratchet from inside in about five seconds. The mechanism of the new, 70-lb. hatch, which Low says can be opened "with your little finger," is assisted by a cylinder of compressed nitrogen gas. Better for escape during ground tests, the quick-opening hatch also provides easier exit and re-entry during operations outside the spacecraft in flight. Moreover, it assures astronauts...
...those found in the burned craft, where the wiring revealed "poor installation, design and workmanship." Though the investigators acknowledged that the precise cause of the fire "most likely will never be positively identified," they said it was "most probably" caused by a faulty conductor in an equipment bay under Grissom's couch. Apparently, current from the conductor "arced"-or spurted-to another object, and the blaze began. Almost immediately, it raged out of control in the cabin's 100% oxygen atmosphere, which was capable of turning any spark into a conflagration. Some 70 Ibs. of inflammable materials such...
...Them Out." When the cabin wall ruptured, escaping pressure sucked the flames across the astronauts-first Grissom, then White, finally Chaffee. Dense smoke and carbon monoxide rapidly filled the cabin. Though the astronauts suffered burns, it was asphyxiation that killed them. So intense were the heat and smoke billowing from the cabin into the "white room" near the craft that rescuers were repeatedly driven back and their gas masks, designed to protect against toxic fumes rather than smoke, were quickly exhausted...
...responsibility for our organization," said Atwood, "I do feel that the responsibility must be widely shared." At one point, North American Vice President John McCarthy quarreled with the board's conclusion that faulty wiring probably caused the fire. Pressed for alternatives, he blurted: "It has been theorized that Grissom could have kicked the wire that would have been attached to the gas chronometer." That would have caused an abrasion in the insulation and made possible the arc that ignited the blaze. When New York Democrat William Fitts Ryan angrily disputed that suggestion, McCarthy retreated. "I only brought...
...that the North Carolina born lawyer owed to his solid friendships with Lyndon Johnson and Oklahoma's late Senator Robert Kerr- Webb declared: "If any man in this room asks for whom the Apollo bell tolls, it tolls for him and me, as well as for Grissom, White and Chaffee. It tolls for every astronaut test pilot who will lose his life in the space-simulated vacuum of a test chamber or the real vacuum of space...