Apollo 1 astronauts screamed 'we're burning up' before being torched alive in explosion
dailystar.co.ukspace race between the USA and the Soviet Union.As part of NASA's plan to be the first to land a man on the moon, they developed the Apollo programme.
Apollo 1 – initially designated AS-204 – was due to launch on February 21, 1967, as the first low Earth orbital test of the Apollo command and service module.The mission never took place, however, as less than a month earlier, on January 27, a fire engulfed the cabin and burnt all three members alive.Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B.
Chaffee all lost their lives that day, with the words, "we're burning up", being the last thing they said.The trio were sealed inside a spacecraft preparing for a simulated lift-off to practice what would happen during their real mission.The astronauts entered the spacecraft at 1pm on that fateful day, but around five-and-a-half hours later, the routine test took a dark turn.
Just after 6:30pm, engineers in mission control saw an increase in oxygen flow and pressure inside the cabin, which was accompanied by a garbled transmission that sounded like “fire.”To stay up to date with all the latest news, make sure you sign up for one of our newsletters here.A split second later, fire "that originated from inside the cabin" penetrated to the outside of the spacecraft and surrounded the moonship in an instant.The transmission was unclear, but the panic was obvious as the astronaut is believed to have shouted “we’ve got a bad fire – let’s get out.
Read more on dailystar.co.uk
