
Apollo 1 - NaOH
http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/the-hell-of-apollo-1-pure-oxygen-a-single-spark-and-death-in-17-seconds
======
19670127
On the evening of that day in 1967 I was a nine year old space junkie watching
Batman -- a phenomenally popular TV show in my demographic -- when ABC
interrupted the show with a bulletin that "one astronaut had died on the pad"
at Cape Kennedy. No other explanation was provided. I was mystified. I knew
there was no launch that day. Our astronauts just didn't die on the pad, and
why only one? Before I could figure it out ABC interrupted again and said
three astronauts had died.

It's flashbulb memory... I can remember where in the house I was sitting, I
can remember the rabbit-ears black-and-white TV, and I can remember the black-
circle dominated graphic that ABC put on the screen. And I remember the
horrible picture of the burned spacecraft on the front page of the Washington
Post two days later as my father held the paper up to read an inside page.

Apparently ABC got a lot of angry calls for interrupting Batman.

Weirdly, years later I was working at a very high profile Silicon Valley
start-up, when our cock-sure management dramatically announced a huge new
project that they had named "Apollo." I realized immediately that it was, to
the day, the 30th anniversary of the fire. I confess that I am a small man,
and did enjoy pointing out the anniversary to others. At least no one died
when our Apollo failed. RIP Roger, Ed, and Gus.

~~~
19670127
Hmm, Wikipedia says there was no Batman episode broadcast that night [0]. I
don't believe it! [edit:] Well, maybe it was "Time Tunnel" \-- my other
favorite show of that era. It was on that night [1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Batman_(TV_series)_epi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Batman_\(TV_series\)_episodes)

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0723777/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0723777/)

~~~
gambiting
It's fascinating that you can _just look up_ what was on TV 50 years ago,
without having to go into ancient archives of a TV station somewhere.

~~~
kmm
It's something I envy the US a lot for. I'm assuming it has to do with the
population of the state I live in being only 6 million, but there is so
comparatively little archived about things like TV shows, and other kinds of
trivial (yet important in its own way) history. You can look up what was on TV
50 years ago, and I couldn't even figure out if "Hey Arnold!" was dubbed or
subtitled.

------
ahh

      But in less than 30 months following the Apollo 1 accident, 
      NASA flew five Apollo missions. During the final one of
      those five, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the
      Moon. Much later, in the last decade of his life, Armstrong
      would reflect on what it took to reach the Moon. “The rate
      of progress is proportional to the risk encountered,” he
      said. “The public at large may well be more risk averse 
      than the individuals in our business, but to limit the
      progress in the name of eliminating risk is no virtue.”
    

Sadly, Armstrong and his ilk no longer makes the calls at NASA (and haven't
for quite some time.) And so we see no progress.

~~~
jdavis703
Or is the problem that each incoming administration wants to rejigger the
programs? If each president (thinking about Bush and Obama) would just hand
the scientists and engineers a few billion dollars and tell them "go do
something that'll make America proud," we'd have something to be proud of by
now.

~~~
brianberns
We'd still need someone to provide a singular vision and focus. Human nature
says you can't just throw money at a group of people and expect that to happen
on its own.

~~~
endymi0n
100 times this. Providing "stupid money" but no vision and no accountability
leads to the "but 4 billion of the budget needs to be spent in MY state - but
then we'll have to transport the boosters by train - but then we'll have to
cut them apart - but then we have to use complex o-ring seals instead of
simply welding them together -> Challenger blows up" bikeshedding of the
shuttle era.

------
pogba101
The sheer bravery of the first men to sign up to go to the moon is
outstanding. I remember listening to an interview where Buzz Aldrin said he
estimated that there was a 60% chance of going to the moon and coming back
home alive. He still decided to do it.

They even wrote a speech for Nixon in case Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got
stranded on the moon:

    
    
      Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to 
      explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
    
      These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that 
      there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that 
      there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
      
      These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most 
      noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

~~~
pjmlp
True, but not less brave than those that ventured into the endless oceans,
when everything everyone knew was only Europe.

~~~
Lio
Or the 8 men on the K-19 Widowmaker submarine who had to repair their reactor
knowing it meant certain death.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3136111.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3136111.stm)

------
gvb
Good information on the chain of decisions that set up Apollo 1 for the
disaster:

"Why Did NASA Still Use Pure Oxygen After the Apollo 1 Fire?"
[http://www.popsci.com/why-did-nasa-still-use-pure-oxygen-
aft...](http://www.popsci.com/why-did-nasa-still-use-pure-oxygen-after-
apollo-1-fire)

(Warning: Horrible crap foisted on you via Javascript if you have that
enabled.)

tl;dr:

1\. Designed Apollo to used a mixed gas (nitrogen/oxygen) atmosphere.

2\. Needed weight savings. Mixed gas requires complicated, heavier, support.

3\. NASA changed to pure oxygen over the objection of the North American
Aviation engineers.

Justification:

a. Pure oxygen was used in the past with no disasters.

b. The pressure in orbit was 5psi. At 5psi, fires are controllable.

4\. Launch pad test with a closed hatch required atmospheric pressure + 5psi
to get the differential pressure of space.

5\. Spark + high pressure oxygen + fuel = disaster.

Added: There were a lot more contributing factors such as the schedule
pressure (wiring issues probably caused the spark) and the lack of explosive
bolts on the hatch which prevented the astronauts from escaping quickly.

Bonus tl;dr on the resolution:

They pressurized the capsule with nitrogen/oxygen on the pad, so it was safe
(other than being on top of a massive bomb). As the capsule ascended, they
bled off the nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere to maintain the 5psi differential
pressure (the astronauts were breathing oxygen via their space suits so it did
not matter to them). Once they were in space, the atmosphere was maintained
with pure oxygen at +5psi.

~~~
robryk
Also, on the way down during landing, the capsule let in external air once
external air pressure was larger than internal. This way they avoided having
oxygen at atmospheric pressure inside at that time.

------
js2
Frank Borman, in his testimony before congress, referred to the accident being
due to a failure of imagination. In searching for his full testimony, I found
this:

"Apollo 1-Challenger-Columbia Lessons Learned" \-
[https://nsc.nasa.gov/sfcs/systemfailurecasestudyfile/downloa...](https://nsc.nasa.gov/sfcs/systemfailurecasestudyfile/download/397)

I also found transcripts of his testimony, but they aren't searchable -
[http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/inv.html](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Apollo204/inv.html)

(I'll have to OCR the pdfs. I started to read the first one and it's fairly
interesting.)

There's two books I always recommend re: Apollo:

1) A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, by Andrew Chaikin.

2) Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and
Beyond, by Gene Kranz.

~~~
pjmorris
Chaikin is terrific on the astronauts. Kranz is staring at me from my
bookshelf, but I've not yet opted to read him. Let me add 'Apollo' by Murray
and Cox to your list. It's focused on the Apollo engineers and managers,
including great discussions of how they re-engineered things after Apollo 1,
and of the behind-the-scenes work on Apollo 13, as well as many other
elements.

~~~
wazoox
The Kranz book is really great. The LEM had its problems, too :)

~~~
vermontdevil
Even though it had problems, the engine design was incorporated into Merlin
engines under SpaceX later on.

Apollo technology - the gift that keeps on giving.

------
nradov
Watch the documentary "The Last Man on the Moon" about Gene Cernan. It spends
some time on the human impact of the Apollo 1 disaster. Imagine having to tell
your next door neighbor that her husband had just burned to death.

[http://thelastmanonthemoon.com/](http://thelastmanonthemoon.com/)

------
colinbartlett
> The risk, of course, is that pure oxygen under high pressure requires but a
> spark to ignite and rapidly burn.

Frustrating to see even a technically-oriented publication report that oxygen
burns.

~~~
Ajedi32
I don't know, I think it kinda depends on how you look at it. Sure oxygen
doesn't burn without a fuel source, but a fuel source won't burn without
oxygen either; both are required in order to produce fire. Why do we then say
the fuel is burning but not the oxygen? Just a thought...

~~~
robryk
Because oxygen is much more common than fuel on Earth's surface.

------
sudoscript
This is what progress looks like. This is what it takes.

~~~
labster
Killing our best and brightest after they express concerns about their safety?
I hope that's not what it takes.

~~~
rad_gruchalski
I guess what was meant was: "progress means sacrifices and sometimes people
die". Nobody killed them on purpose...

