Реферат: Apollo 4 Essay Research Paper Apollo 4Introduction

Apollo 4 Essay, Research Paper

Apollo 4

Introduction

This paper is going to compare the Apollo 1 and the Challenger disasters.

Both space programs were unfortunate disasters, caused by a series of oversights

and misjudgments. How did this lost of life occur in such a high tech

environment? Apollo 4

On January 27, 1967, the three astronauts of the Apollo 4, were doing a

test countdown on the launch pad. Gus Grissom was in charge. His crew were

Edward H. White, the first American to walk in space, and Roger B. Chaffee, a

naval officer going up for the first time. 182 feet below, R.C.A technician

Gary Propst was seated in front of a bank of television monitors, listening to

the crew radio channel and watching various televisions for important activity.

Inside the Apollo 4 there was a metal door with a sharp edge. Each time

the door was open and shut, it scraped against an environmental control unit

wire. The repeated abrasion had exposed two tiny sections of wire. A spark

alone would not cause a fire, but just below the cuts in the cable was a length

of aluminum tubing, which took a ninety-degree turn. There were hundreds of

these turns in the whole capsule. The aluminum tubing carried a glycol cooling

fluid, which is not flammable, but when exposed to air it turns to flammable

fumes. The capsule was filled with pure oxygen in an effort to allow the

astronauts to work more efficiently. It also turns normally not so flammable

items to highly flammable items. Raschel netting that was highly flammable in

the pure oxygen environment was near the exposed section of the wires.

At 6:31:04 p.m. the Raschel netting burst into an open flame. A second

after the netting burst into flames, the first message came over the crew’s

radio channel: “Fire,” Grissom said. Two Seconds later, Chaffee said clearly,

“We’ve got a fire in the cockpit.” His tone was businesslike (Murray 191).

There was no camera in the cabin, but a remote control camera, if zoomed

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