The Apollo Spacecraft

Almost with the announcement of the lunar landing commitment in 1961 NASA technicians began a crash program to develop a reasonable configuration for the trip to lunar orbit and back. What they came up with was a three-person command module capable of sustaining human life for two weeks or more in either Earth orbit or in a lunar trajectory; a service module holding oxygen, fuel, maneuvering rockets, fuel cells, and other expendable and life support equipment that could be jettisoned upon reentry to Earth; a retrorocket package attached to the service module for slowing to prepare for reentry; and finally a launch escape system that was discarded upon achieving orbit. The tear-drop shaped command module had two hatches, one on the side for entry and exit of the crew at the beginning and end of the flight and one in the nose with a docking collar for use in moving to and from the lunar landing vehicle.⁷⁴

Work on the Apollo spacecraft stretched from 28 November 1961, when the prime contract for its development was let to North American Aviation, to 22 October 1968 when the last test flight took place. In between there were various efforts to design, build, and test the spacecraft both on the ground and in suborbital and orbital flights. For instance, on 13 May 1964 NASA tested a boilerplate model of the Apollo capsule atop a stubby Little Joe II military booster, and another Apollo capsule actually achieved orbit on 18 September 1964 when it was launched atop a Saturn I. By the end of 1966 NASA leaders declared the Apollo command module ready for human occupancy. The final flight checkout of the spacecraft prior to the lunar flight took place on 11-22 October 1968 with three astronauts.⁷⁵

As these development activities were taking place, tragedy struck the Apollo program. On 27 January 1967, Apollo-Saturn (AS) 204, scheduled to be the first spaceflight with astronauts aboard the capsule, was on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, moving through simulation tests. The three astronauts to fly on this mission—“Gus” Grissom, Edward White, and Roger B. Chaffee—were aboard running through a mock launch sequence. At 6:31 p.m., after several hours of work, a fire broke out in the spacecraft and the pure oxygen atmosphere intended for the flight helped it burn with intensity. In a flash, flames engulfed the capsule and the astronauts died of asphyxiation. It took the ground crew five minutes to open the hatch. When they did so they found three bodies. Although three other astronauts had been killed before this time—all in plane crashes—these were the first deaths directly attributable to the U.S. space program.⁷⁶

Shock gripped NASA and the nation during the days that followed. James Webb, NASA Administrator, told the media at the time, “We've always known that something like this was going to happen soon or later. . . . who would have thought that the first tragedy would be on the ground?”⁷⁷ As the nation mourned, Webb went to President Lyndon Johnson and asked that NASA be allowed to handle the accident investigation and direct the recovery from the accident. He promised to be truthful in assessing blame and pledged to assign it to himself and NASA management as appropriate. The day after the fire NASA appointed an eight member investigation board, chaired by longtime NASA official and director of the Langley Research Center, Floyd L. Thompson. It set out to discover the details of the tragedy: what happened, why it happened, could it happen again, what was at fault, and how could NASA recover? The members of the board learned that the fire had been caused by a short circuit in the electrical system that ignited combustible materials in the spacecraft fed by the oxygen atmosphere. They also found that it could have been prevented and called for several modifications to the spacecraft, including a move to a less oxygen-rich environment. Changes to the capsule followed quickly, and within a little more than a year it was ready for flight.⁷⁸

Webb reported these findings to various Congressional committees and took a personal grilling at every meeting. His answers were sometimes evasive and always defensive. The New York Times, which was usually critical of Webb, had a field day with this situation and said that NASA stood for “Never a Straight Answer.” While the ordeal was personally taxing, whether by happenstance or design Webb deflected much of the backlash over the fire from both NASA as an agency and from the Johnson administration. While he was personally tarred with the disaster, the space agency’s image and popular support was largely undamaged. Webb himself never recovered from the stigma of the fire, and when he left NASA in October 1968, even as Apollo was nearing a successful completion, few mourned his departure.⁷⁹

The AS 204 fire also troubled Webb ideologically during the months that followed. He had been a high priest of technocracy ever since coming to NASA in 1961, arguing for the authority of experts, well-organized and led, and with sufficient resources to resolve the “many great economic, social, and political problems” that pressed the nation. He wrote in his book, Space Age Management, as late as 1969 that “Our Society has reached a point where its progress and even its survival increasingly depend upon our ability to organize the complex and to do the unusual.”⁸⁰ He believed he had achieved that model organization for complex accomplishments at NASA. Yet that model structure of exemplary management had failed to anticipate and resolve the shortcomings in the Apollo capsule design and had not taken what seemed in retrospect to be normal precautions to ensure the safety of the crew. The system had broken down. As a result Webb became less trustful of other officials at NASA and gathered more and more decisionmaking authority to himself. This wore on him during the rest of his time as NASA Administrator, and in reality the failure of the technological model for solving problems was an important forecaster of a trend that would be increasingly present in American culture thereafter as technology was blamed for a good many of society’s ills. That problem would be particularly present as NASA tried to win political approval of later NASA projects.⁸¹