It was 48 years ago today - January 27,1967 - that a fire on the launchpad claimed the lives of the astronauts of Apollo 1, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White. Sparks from an arcing wire ignited the oxygen-rich atmosphere and filled the cabin with flames within ten seconds.
Grissom had written his memoirs after the Gemini program and concluded that “soon or later, inevitably, we're going to . . . lose somebody. I hope this never happens. . . but if it does, I hope the American people won't feel it's too high a price to pay for our space program.†I doubt that he thought he would be one of the casualties.
And at least these three deaths led to substantial redesign of the Apollo command module to make it safer. This probably saved other lives later. There is a plaque on the launchpad where they died. AD ASTRA PER ASPERA means a rough road to the stars.
In the photograph Ed White's son is touching his father's name on a wall of the Kennedy Space Center.