Word: grissoms
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...space without so much as a stubbed-toe casualty. There had been the heart-stopping suspense of Alan Shepard's first flat-arc flight in 1961, the terrifying uncertainty of John Glenn's reentry into the atmosphere in a heat-seared Mercury craft in 1962, and Gus Grissom's hairbreadth escape from drowning when his Liberty Bell 7 was swamped in the Atlantic. Then came the miraculously flawless series of ten Gemini trips, in which Americans repeatedly broke all records for survival in space, strolled blithely out into that brutal environment, and navigated their craft through...
...always approached their jobs with the workaday fatalism of men who live with death at their elbows. When John Glenn returned from his harrowing trip, he cautioned: "We are going to have failures. There are going to be sacrifices made in the program; we have been lucky so far." Grissom himself said in words that may long be remembered: "If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life...
Though it happened under circumstances that, theoretically, are no more hazardous than the car ride to the Cape, the fact that Grissom, White and Chaffee lost their lives on the ground has a symbolism all its own. For even more important than the down-played dedication, the casual-seeming courage and the nonchalance under pressure that the astronauts bring to bear in actual flight is the drilled-in professionalism, perfectionism and thoroughness that they must have to master the incredibly intricate tools of their trade. They are heroic pioneers, but they are also brilliant technicians-and they could...
...would have tested both the mettle and the technology of the three astronauts beyond anything that men had yet experienced in space. On Feb. 21, the capsule was to be fired off the ground by a Saturn 1-B rocket to go into orbit for as long as Grissom, White and Chaffee could take it, an "open-end" mission that marked a bold departure from the rigidly limited space flights of the past. It was to be essentially an engineering flight, a manned shakedown for the Apollo systems, which had already twice been fired aloft without anyone aboard. If things...
...cone-shaped ship consists of two sections or modules. In the top section, Command Pilot Grissom, Senior Pilot White and Pilot Chaffee occupied three cockpit couches looking up at the ship's maze of controls-gauges, dials, switches, lights and toggles. The service module below is essentially an engine room, housing fuel, the crew's oxygen, the basic electrical system, and a large rocket with 22,500 Ibs. of thrust to be used for space maneuverings, braking the ship into lunar orbit and supplying the propulsion necessary to send it back to earth. The whole capsule...