"To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield . . ."
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Death could have come in any number of bizarre ways. In the explosion of an errant rocket in the view of millions on TV; in the instant incineration of a capsule out of control during the treacherous reentry into the earth's heavy atmosphere; in the coffin of a malfunctioning craft unable to descend that orbits, orbits, orbits in the spatial void while power ebbs and life leaks away in slow suffocation.
But the first three U.S. astronauts to die on duty were motionless and earth-bound when they were killed last week. With helmet faceplates closed and suits pressurized, they reclined in a row on padded couches in their cylindrical Apollo capsule, running through the countdown of a simulated launch, a routine but rigorous rehearsal for the real thing. They had been there 5 hrs. 31 min. when fire exploded in the cabin. Within seconds, Lieut. Colonel Virgil
Grissom, 40, Lieut. Colonel Edward White, 36, and Lieut. Commander Rog- er Chaffee, 31, lay dead in the charred cockpit of a vehicle that was built to hit the moon 239,000 miles away, but never got closer than the tip of a Saturn rocket, 218 ft. above Launching Pad 34 at Cape Kennedy.
Workaday Fatalism. Sixteen times the U.S. has rocketed men far into 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 the incredibly delicate maneuver of tracking down and docking with another vehicle in the vast reaches of the heavens.
Everyone feared, and some had warned, that some day, somewhere, such a string of luck would have to snap. The astronauts have 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 not be astronauts without being both.
Open-End Mission. As it was planned, the flight of Apollo 204 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 went well, Apollo 204 would lead to two other manned flights later this year, and then, possibly as early as 1968, to fulfillment of man's ancient vision of a landing on the moon.
The Apollo, built by North American Aviation, is by far the biggest, most sophisticated space vehicle ever made. It is to the Gemini what a Boeing 747 is to a DC-6--roomy enough for a man to stand erect and move about, equipped with space luxuries such as hammocks for stretched-out sleeping, hot and cold water, even a toilet.
The 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 is 34 ft. long, weighs about 30 tons when fully fueled. Ultimately, the Apollo will also carry a lunar module, a buglike, rocket-powered ferry that two astronauts will board for the last-leg descent to the moon's surface, while the main capsule cruises in waiting orbit.
Countdown-Minus-10. At 1 p.m. on Friday last week, Grissom, White and Chaffee strolled casually into the gantry elevator on Pad 34, rose swiftly to a sterilized "white room," then ambled along the 20-ft. catwalk to the stainless-steel hull of the capsule, now secured to the Saturn rocket inside the launching complex. The craft was like an old friend, for they had spent hours in it during vacuum-chamber tests in the Houston Space Center, had run through identical launch-simulation procedures several times before.
All spacecraft have their own personal quirks, and 204 had been balky from the start. As an Apollo engineer said: "The first article from the factory cannot come out without birth pains." The spacecraft gave repeated trouble. The nozzle of its big engine shattered during one test. The heat shield of the command module split wide open and the ship sank like a stone when it was dropped at high speed into a water tank. Certain kinds of fuel caused ruptures in attitude-control fuel tanks. The cooling system failed, causing a two-month delay for redesign. But all the bugs were eventually ironed out, as far as the experts knew, after arduous testing under every conceivable circumstance. Last week's test was billed as the ship's first full "plugs-out" operation-- meaning that the craft was to rely solely on its own power system instead of using an exterior source. The trio climbed inside the ship, hooked up their silver suits to the environmental control system (which feeds oxygen to the suits and purifies the air in the cabin), snapped their faceplates shut and waited while the suits became pressurized. At 2:50 p.m., the airtight double hatch plates were sealed. And the familiar routine began, an infinitely detailed run-through that was scheduled to last slightly more than five hours.
Things progressed smoothly enough; a few "glitches" (minor problems) stalled the operation. At countdown-minus-10-minutes, the procedure was stopped again because of static in the communications channels between the spacecraft and technicians at the operations center. It took 15 minutes to correct the problem, and the simulated count was ready to begin again. Then, at 6:31 p.m., a voice cried from inside the capsule: "Fire aboard the space-craft!"
No Random Failure. At the same instant, a couple of technicians standing on a level with the craft windows saw a blinding flash inside the ship. Heavy smoke began to seep from the capsule, filling the white room. A workman sprinted across the catwalk leading to the craft, tried desperately to loosen the hatch cover. He was driven back by the intense heat and smoke, but half a dozen other technicians, some wearing face masks and asbestos gloves, raced to help. One or two would try to wrench open the hatch, then fall back from the scorching heat while others struggled with it. Six minutes after the cry of alarm, the hatch sprang open. A blast of hot air shot out, followed by suffocating clouds of smoke.
The rest was silence. The flames were apparently sucked into the astronauts' space suits, killing them as soon as they noticed the fire. The three charred bodies were left strapped to their couches for more than seven hours while anguished experts sought to piece together the reasons for the accident.
The craft's fuel system was empty. Although the interior of the cabin was filled with pure oxygen, it could not have caught fire itself unless there was a source of ignition (a spark, an over-heated bearing, a short circuit) and some other substance to flare up first. The capsule itself was a total loss, charred and blackened both inside and out, its intricately sensitive instrumentation ruined beyond any further useful purpose--except in whatever clues to the cause it can offer. A top-level board of inquiry was appointed immediately, and space technicians were convinced that they would find an explanation with the help of tapes and films recorded during the disaster and a diode-by-diode dissection of the capsule itself. "There is no such thing as a random failure," snapped Joseph Shea, 40, the brilliant University of Michigan-trained engineer who brought the Apollo pro- gram from near-chaos to the brink of success in three years. "Every failure has a cause."
At week's end early expert guesswork came up with few plausible possibilities. The sealed plumbing system that keeps the cabin atmosphere livable employs a coolant, ethylene glycol (a dihydroxy alcohol akin to automobile antifreeze). One theory was that if this had leaked anywhere, it could have flamed up from a tiny spark and triggered the oxygen-fed explosion. In any case, it would have taken the astronauts five minutes, in the best of circumstances, to lug open the escape hatches.
"Valiant Young Men." Word of the tragedy was withheld from the public for nearly two hours. First hints that something had gone wrong at Cape Kennedy came around 7 p.m., when wives of Cape technicians received tense phone calls from their husbands, saying only that they would be home late. Sensing that something drastic had happened, the women besieged newspapers and radio stations with anxious questions. Reporters began calling the Cape to find out what was wrong. Not until 8:30 p.m. was the announcement made to the press. The orange-yellow lights on Pad 34 burned all night.
President Johnson got the news in the strangely coincidental company of space-administration officials and five of the dead astronauts' colleagues--all of whom were at the White House, celebrating the signing of the international space treaty. The President issued a somber statement, mourning the loss of "three valiant young men." A thick pall settled over the Cape Kennedy area too, for the men of the U.S. space program are held there in the same loving awe in which shipmasters were held by Elizabethan England. Indeed, the entire na- tion was stunned. By now, most Americans had come to believe that the cool, infinitely competent company of astronauts had the savvy, scientific support and blessed good fortune to survive any ordeal.
Their deaths were all the more shocking because two of the men--Gus Grissom and Ed White--had performed feats that made their names household words.
Improbable Pioneer. As the smallest (5 ft. 7 in.), most reticent of the seven original astronauts chosen in 1959, Gus Grissom seemed an improbable space pioneer. Yet he was one of the most talented and experienced of some 50 spacemen the U.S. has trained to date. Rejected by the Air Corps during World War II because he was under age, Grissom applied again when he turned 18, spent his wartime service as an aviation cadet. After his discharge, he got a mechanical-engineering degree at Purdue before rejoining the Air Force in 1950 to stay. He flew 100 combat missions in the Korean War, later became a hot-shot test pilot. He had a passion for speed, on water, land or in the air: he took up powerboat racing, teamed up with Astronaut Gordon Cooper to buy a piece of a racing car entered in last year's Indianapolis 500.
Grissom served as the little-known backup man for Shepard's historic Project Mercury flight. Five weeks later, Gus roared out of obscurity aboard Liberty Bell 7 as the second American in space. His 118-mile-high suborbital flight was a success, but the splashdown in the Atlantic ended in near-disaster when the capsule hatch inexplicably blew off, swamping Grissom inside. Gus swam from the sinking craft and was rescued by helicopter. Though he was in no way to blame for the mishap, he inevitably became known to the public as the astronaut who lost his capsule. He became more reticent, withdrew even more than usual to the company of his wife Betty and two sons, convinced that he had to prove himself anew.
Grissom got that chance when he was picked as the pilot of America's first two-man spacecraft. With the launching of Gemini 3 on its three-orbit flight on March 23, 1965, Grissom became the first man ever to journey twice into space. Aided by Co-Pilot John Young, he scored yet another space first when he took over the controls himself, skill- fully piloted the craft through a series of tricky orbit-changing maneuvers. After that success, Grissom seemed to loosen up. The Apollo flight would have made him the only man to enter space three times. Hours before last week's disaster, Apollo Program Manager Shea remarked: "Gus really wants this flight. He's determined to keep that thing up there (16 days, if he can."
"It's Fun." Ed White, who came along in the second generation of astronauts in 1962, had the warmth and folksiness that Grissom lacked. In fact, when his celebrated space walk on June 3, 1965 put him in the first rank of astronaut heroes, it was as much for his offhanded casualness as for the feat itself. With the world following his every move, White stepped out of orbiting Gemini 4 at the end of a 24-ft. tether, strolled in space for a spell, then matter-of-factly informed Pilot James Alton McDivitt: "It's fun. I'm not coming in." At one point, McDivitt protested: "Hey, you smeared my window you dirty dog." Replied the floating White: "Yep." He finally returned to the capsule after a 20-minute stroll-- during which he maneuvered far more freely than Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov had in a ten-minute space walk three months before. Said he: "I felt red, white and blue all over."
White was as honed for space as any astronaut could hope to be. The son of a retired Air Force major general, he once recalled that his father took him on his first airplane ride when he "was barely old enough to strap on a parachute," let him take the controls as soon as they were airborne. White naturally gravitated to West Point, graduated in 1952, earned a master of science degree in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan, became a jet pilot. He married a petite blonde he met on a West Point football weekend; they had a son and a daughter.
An archetypical all-American boy, White was quietly religious, unashamed-T/ patriotic and ruggedly athletic. At West Point, he starred in soccer, set an Academy record in the 400-meter hurdles, just barely missed qualifying for the 1952 U.S. Olympic team. Zealous when it came to physical fitness, White jogged a couple of miles every morning to keep in shape, shinnied a 40-foot rope in his backyard on weekends, usually bicycled the three miles between his Houston home and the NASA Space Center. To his fellow astronauts, it came as no surprise when White took along a gold cross, a St. Christopher medal and a Star of David on his 62-orbit Gemini 4 flight, explaining afterward that they were "the most important thing that I had going for me."
Roger Chaffee, the rookie of the Apollo team, joined the Navy after his graduation (aeronautical engineering) from Purdue in 1957, logged more than 1,800 hours flying time in jets before becoming an astronaut in 1963. During training for the Apollo mission, the boyishly handsome Chaffee came to be especially close to Grissom, at times even seemed to ape some of Gus's mannerisms. Though he prudently stayed in the shadow of his more experienced crewmates, Chaffee shared their burning ambition to land on the moon; in the den of his Houston home hangs a map of the lunar landscape. Last summer, after watching a spectacular launching of a Saturn rocket at Cape Kennedy, Chaffee, father of two, turned to his wife Martha, and exclaimed: "It's going to be a beautiful sight. I can't wait to take a ride on that bird."
Ready & Waiting. The impact of three deaths aboard a "bird" raised anew the question of whether the conquest of space is really worth the cost --in lives or in money. Congressional support has been relatively lukewarm recently, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials considered themselves lucky to get a $5.05 billion budget proposal from the President this year.
But NASA backers are convinced that the race for the moon will continue. Said California Democrat George Miller, chairman of the House Science and Astronautics Committee: "This is a tragedy; nevertheless, it is one of the hazards that take place. Remember, every new aircraft has cost lives of test pilots, and the pilots know it. I am certain that if Grissom, White and Chaffee could come back, they would be the first to urge that the program go on."
There is a second Apollo capsule waiting to be shipped to Cape Kennedy from North American Aviation's plant in Downey, Calif. There is also a back-up crew--led by Navy Captain Walter Schirra--to man the shot. But there is certain to be a long delay, for scientists must be absolutely certain that the cause of the fire is not a congenital weakness in the ship. Beyond that, it will take months to get the new capsule thoroughly tested and in position atop her Saturn 1-B. The earliest possible date that Apollo 204 could be rescheduled is late summer. Nevertheless, though the entire moonshot schedule will lag far behind expectations, there is no possibility that it will be canceled.
Because It's There. Surveyor I and Lunar Orbiter II have illumined the moon as being little more than an ugly grey rock pile. So why send a man to see for himself? The geologist wants it done because he hopes to find clues to when and how the earth came to be. The biologist wants to know if there are any vestiges of existence there that might solve the riddle of what life really is. The astronomer hopes that a definitive look at the moon could help unlock the secret of how the solar system was formed. The astronaut wants to go because it is there.
New as it is in the history of mankind's progress, the conquest of space symbolizes one of man's oldest, most basic drives: the hunger for knowledge, the lure of every new frontier, the challenge of the impossible. And that is the legacy left behind by Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee-- just as it was by men like Marco Polo, Magellan, Charles A. Lindbergh and Explorer Robert Falcon Scott, whose Antarctic memorial bears an inscription from Tennyson's Ulysses: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
The line is as fitting an epitaph for those who have died as it is a raison d'etre for those who will continue to seek and find.
* Three others--Charles Bassett, Elliot See Jr. and Theodore Freeman--died in jet-plane crashes. The Soviets are known to have had only two cosmonaut casualties: one in a high-altitude parachute jump that is required of all space trainees, the other in an auto accident.
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