Brotherly Love

“Is that the only jacket you’ve got?” Gus Grissom’s youngest brother inquired as we set off for the launch pad where the astronaut and his crew were killed 50 years to the day. It was the kind of concern for others you’d expect to hear from Lowell Grissom. “It’s going to be cold out there on the pad tonight.”

I hustled up to my room at a Cocoa Beach hotel to retrieve a sweater, then told Lowell if I brought it I wouldn’t need it. That’s exactly what happened on the eerily still evening a half-century after the Apollo 1 astronauts died on Pad 34 during a countdown simulation that was considered “routine.”

Lowell had invited me to be his guest during two days of observances of the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire. After years of anguish over what to do with brother Gus’s ship, he and others had succeeded in brokering a deal whereby NASA and the Kennedy Space Center at long last agreed to display pieces of the charred spacecraft: the three hatches that contributed to the crews’ sudden and shocking deaths.

The display of those damned hatches in an exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center provided a measure of closure to the astronauts’ families, who were accurately described as the real “heroes” of the Space Race.

The inner hatch of the Apollo 204 spacecraft, also known as Apollo 1. The crew fought to open the cork-like, inward-opening behemoth after a cockpit fire erupted on the pad. To the left is the ablative hatch that would have protected the spacecraft during reentry. By the time pad technicians removed all three hatches, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were dead. (George Leopold)

On our way out to Pad 34 that Friday evening—the Apollo 1 fire had also occurred on a Friday—I asked Lowell when was the last time he saw his peripatetic brother, the commander of Apollo 1 and the first human to fly twice in space.

“I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that question before,” Lowell responded. It had been several years, he reckoned. Gus was always on the move—from Cape Canaveral to Houston to Downey, Calif., where the faulty Block 1 Apollo command module was being slapped together. In the mid-1960s, Lowell too was pursuing a successful managerial career at McDonnell Aircraft and other aerospace companies.

The brothers’ paths seldom crossed. There was a hint of regret in Lowell’s voice as he struggled to remember. A year, maybe two…. Perhaps a brief phone conversation with Gus in the months before his death….

Gus’s family was well aware of his profound misgivings about the first manned Apollo ship. As always, they figured he’d find a way to fix it, command the maiden voyage of a new spacecraft (as he had on Gemini 3 in March 1965). Then Gus would be in line for a moon landing mission, perhaps the first human to walk on its surface.

That was not to be, and Lowell vividly recalled that Friday evening in January 1967 when the call came from his parents back in Mitchell, Indiana: Gus and his crew were dead, killed by a fire in a deathtrap of a spacecraft during a “plugs out “test. Dennis and Cecile Grissom wanted to let Gus’s siblings know before the reporters knocked on their doors.

Lowell and I made our way to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to board busses that would take us out to Pad 34. Two were not enough to accommodate the crowd that evening. We joined a motorcade on “ICBM Row” out to the launch pad. On the way, as we passed Hanger S where Gus and the other Mercury astronauts lived and nursed along their spacecraft in the early 1960s, Lowell asked: “How fast do you think Gus drove his Corvette on these straightaways?” As close to the 180-mph maximum of his Vette as possible, we agreed.

The older brother loved fast machines; he had to master them.

A large crowd had gathered already at the crumbling launch pad as the sun began to set and the first stars appeared—Venus was up that still night, and the sweater indeed was not needed. Gus’s wife, Betty—absent from the other Apollo 1 observances—had arrived and was wheeled front row center by son Mark. (She has never missed the ceremony.) Scott Grissom was a nearby, as was Gus Grissom’s great-granddaughter, surprisingly well behaved given the solemn ceremony to follow. You could see in the child’s eyes her great-grandfather’s twinkle.

The ceremony began marking the 50^th year since the awful fire. The crew was praised for their sacrifice. Bagpipes played, followed by “Taps”. The flash of cameras recorded the scene. Lowell sat quietly, taking it all in as he had on successive anniversaries. Robert Cabana, the director of the Kennedy Space Center, recalled the words of the astronaut Michael Collins: “We reached the moon because of Apollo 1, no in spite of Apollo 1.”

Those words needed to be said.

A moment of silence at 6:31:04 p.m. eastern time, the exact moment of the first spacecraft call of “Fire!” Then the crowd began to disperse. Astronaut colleagues of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee lingered to reminisce with Cabana. Just then, the International Space Station appeared overhead. Some of us complimented Cabana on NASA’s exquisite timing. He marveled at the coincidence that the space station should fly directly over Pad 34 as the Apollo 1 observances closed.

The former shuttle commander reminded us that he had hauled up the first two components of the space station. He wasn’t boasting, for Cabana understood he stood on the shoulders of giants like Grissom, White and Chaffee.

Lowell and I retired to the Radisson Cocoa Beach where the families were encamped to drink a toast to the Apollo 1 crew. Masato Maruyama, who again made the pilgrimage from Japan to Cape Canaveral, brought a large bottle of sake, and we all drink a toast to the crew.

As Gus said, “If I die, throw a party!” We honored his wish in the Radisson bar.

Lowell was tired. It had been a long week for him and the other families. They have never adjusted to all the attention. Lowell and I parted in the hotel elevator. It occurred to me as I stepped out and the door closed that Gus Grissom couldn’t have asked for a better brother.

—

(Photo caption: Lowell Grissom and Carly Sparks, Gus Grissom’s granddaughter, with Bonnie White Baer and Cheryl Chaffee during the 50th Anniversary Remembrance of the Apollo 1 fire at the Kennedy Space Center.)

Display the Apollo 1 Spacecraft

The U.S. House of Representative recently approved plans to mint coins commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing approaching in July 2019. This is a worthy gesture.

There is, of course, another waypoint in the history of human spaceflight approaching in a few days: The fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire that claimed the lives of Gus Grissom and his crewmates Edward White and Roger Chaffee. Lawmakers have so far failed to act on a proposal for an Apollo 1 memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, where Grissom and Chaffee are interred. (It is hard to believe that after all these years no proper monument has been erected at Arlington.)

An Apollo 1 exhibit is said to be in the works at Cape Canaveral, Florida, but NASA has otherwise been silent about any plans to honor the memory of Grissom and his crew as January 27 approaches. This is unfortunate.

I and others have long advocated the dignified public display of the Apollo 1 command module as a symbol of the crews’ sacrifice and as a reminder that spaceflight is risky, that the United States conducts space exploration in front of the entire world—the triumphs as well as the tragedies. Others have correctly noted that NASA has offered largely empty gestures in honoring the Apollo 1 crew.

The NASA veteran James Oberg argued a decade ago that these “make believe” remembrances represent nothing less than a “cultural failure.” This needed to be said.

The space agency must now do what it should have done long ago: Honor the Apollo 1 crew with an appropriate display of the spacecraft that is accessible to all.

Following the Apollo 204 (Apollo 1) fire investigation, the command module and heat shield (background) are prepared for shipment from the Kennedy Space Center to the NASA facility at Langley, Va., where it remains to this day. (Source: NASA)

 

The USS Arizona still entombs the remains of its crew, but has been displayed with dignity at Pearl Harbor for decades. It is among the top historical sites in the nation. One can attend a performance at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC. We need to accord the same honor to the Apollo 1 crew, and remind all who work to send humans into space that they must always be mindful of the what the early NASA pioneer Robert Gilruth called our “precious human cargo.”

Indeed, the display of another Grissom spacecraft—his recovered Liberty Bell 7—is inspiring a new generation of space enthusiasts. I recently viewed Grissom’s Mercury spacecraft at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, where it is on loan. Salvaged in 1999, Grissom’s Mercury spacecraft was beautifully restored by the Kansas Cosmosphere after thirty-eight years at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

One museum visitor I met marveled how Gus Grissom ever managed to thrust himself out a small hatch opening as his ship filled with water when his hatch blew unexpectedly. Seeing Liberty Bell 7 for them selves made a profound impression on those who likely were just learning the story of Gus Grissom’s historic flight.

A similar display of the Apollo 1 command module would also teach valuable lessons about Grissom’s courage and selflessness—character traits in short supply these days.

Here’s hoping at long last that NASA does right by the memory of Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and his Apollo crewmates on the fiftieth anniversary of their ultimate sacrifice.

–George Leopold is the author of Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Time of Gus Grissom from Purdue University Press.

From the Desk of Francis French: Finding Apollo

Apollo Pilot: The Memoir of Astronaut Donn Eisele (January 2017) is the newest book in the popular series, Outward Odyssey: A People’s History of Spaceflight. Francis French is the director of educ…

Source: From the Desk of Francis French: Finding Apollo

Wall Street Journal review of “Calculated Risk”

Link to Wall Street Journal review:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/riding-a-lemon-to-the-moon-1468614346

In the coming weeks, I’ll be speaking with veteran newscaster Bill Kurtis about the history of Apollo and signing books at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and the Udvar-Hazy Annex at Dulles International Airport.

Hope to see you there.

 

The Many Friends of Gus Grissom

Writing a book is simultaneously hard work and a labor of love. Among the pleasures are the folks encountered along the way. There were many such instances during the seven or so years it took me to write a biography of the astronaut Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom.

I received a call the other day from Joe Dreyer, a buddy of Gus’s during their Air Force flight training in the early 1950s. Several of Joe’s photos of Grissom are published—I believe for the first time—in Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom.

Joe informed me he had seen the book listed on Amazon, and was curious to know whether I had used his photos, which he had mailed to me last winter.

Indeed, we did, I informed Joe. He seemed very pleased.

Joe’s kindness in entrusting his precious photos of Gus Grissom to a complete stranger illustrates the high regard for my subject held among his peers and colleagues. There in a photo album in Connecticut was a small part of Gus Grissom’s story, and Joe Dreyer wanted to be sure that anyone interested in the early days of spaceflight saw these images of two young men in their flight suits learning to control a flying machine.

Some of Joe’s photos are posted below.

Flight cadets Joe Dreyer and Gus Grissom at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, in 1950. Dreyer added the prophetic caption. (Courtesy of Albert Joe Dreyer)

 

Air Cadet Gus Grissom at the controls of his T-6 trainer, a demanding aircraft. (Courtesy of Alfred Joe Dreyer)

A few weeks back, I was invited to participate in the Gus Grissom Classic, an annual golf tournament sponsored by a Purdue University alumni group in Jasper, Indiana. (Purdue University Press published my biography of Grissom, who graduated from Purdue with an engineering degree in 1950.) There, I met four McDonnell Douglas engineers who worked closely with Grissom and the other Mercury and Gemini astronauts during the heyday of the Space Race in the early 1960s.

The foursome—Dean Purdy, Earl Robb, Jerry Roberts and Bob Schepp—represent much of the institutional memory of the early days of manned spaceflight. They figured out ways to make those magnificent early machines fly in space and bring back their precious human cargoes in one piece. These engineers did things that had never been done before, like sending the original space computer into orbit on Gus Grissom’s Gemini 3 flight, the first space voyage in which astronauts actually steered their spacecraft.

At some point, perhaps in an expanded edition of Calculated Risk, I will include some of the amazing, funny, harrowing stories these four men were kind enough to share. Several of the McDonnell engineers’ wives also attended the event in Indiana. They too had stories to tell about frenzied lives at Cape Canaveral and St. Louis in the 1960s when husbands did not come home until a test was completed. Twenty-four hour shifts were common in those days, and the wives assumed nearly all the parental duties.

Still, they understood the magnitude of what their engineer husbands were attempting. Unlike many of the astronauts, the McDonnell engineers remain married to the same woman.

Theirs is a great generation, and I am indebted to them for sharing their stories about Gus Grissom and the dawn of human space exploration.

Click here for more on the careers of Purdy, Robb, Roberts, Schepp and the rest of “The Mercury 6.”

Event schedule for release of Gus Grissom biography, ‘Calculated Risk’

In conjunction with this week’s launch of Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom, I’ll be speaking with the folks at Authors’ Voice during Book Expo America in Chicago on May 13.

The interview will be streamed live from the expo floor beginning at 2:30 p.m. CST on Friday, May 13. Listeners are invited to submit questions. Details about my appearance on Authors’ Voice during Book Expo America are available here.

I’ll also being signing copies of Calculated Risk at Book Expo America starting at 1 p.m. CST on May 13. Details are here.

The launch of my biography of Gus Grissom also coincides with Indiana’s bicentennial celebration. Books signings are also scheduled for Saturday, May 14, in Lafayette and at Indy Reads Books in Indianapolis. The official release date for Calculated Risk is June 15.

Look forward to seeing you at one of these events.

Interview with author of Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom

In advance of the release of Calculated Risk, the news web site Reston Now published an interview. See the full story here.

My biography of Gus Grissom will be released next week by Purdue University Press, and I’ll be signing copies on May 13 in Chicago during Book Expo America. Hope to see you there.

Apollo 1: The Crew of a New Machine

Fifty years ago on this date the crew of the first manned American Apollo mission was announced. Gus Grissom was named commander of the three-man crew that included Ed White, the nation’s first spacewalker, and rookie Roger Chaffee. Grissom and Chaffee were both Purdue University engineering graduates.

For Grissom, the first human to fly twice in space, the prized assignment meant he was on schedule to become the first to fly a third mission. As the Apollo program gained momentum, Grissom also was positioned to be among the first—perhaps the first, some thought—to walk on the moon.

Robert Gilruth, right, director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, introduces the crew of the first manned Apollo flight on March 21, 1966. From left, Roger Chaffee, Ed White and commander Gus Grissom. (NASA)

Walt Cunningham, a member of the Apollo 1 backup crew, noted in his insider account of Project Apollo, The All-American Boys: “Among the milestones of a test pilot’s career are those rare first flights of a brand-new aircraft design (or spacecraft), and now Gus would be logging two in a little over two years.”[1]

Grissom and his crew soon discovered the heightened risks that accompanied the prestige of making the first flight of a new machine. The early version of the Apollo crew cabin was a mess. From March 1966 to January 1967, Grissom and his crew along with backup commander Wally Schirra struggled mightily to make the ship flightworthy. Schirra told Grissom the day before a fatal test to “get out” of the spacecraft if he sensed any problems. Grissom noted Schirra’s warning but chose to press on.

The crew of Apollo 1 never got off the ground, dying tragically and unnecessarily in a launch pad fire on the evening of January 27. 1967, during what was considered a “routine” test. Design decisions made in the early 1960s such as using a 100-percent cabin atmosphere had doomed the first Apollo crew.

Today it seems counterintuitive, but at the time nearly everyone at NASA realized the United States would never have reached the moon by the end of the 1960s if not for the Apollo 1 disaster. The early American space program was divided between everything that occurred before and after what came to be known simply as “The Fire.” The truth was no one really knew how to reach the moon. The bitter lessons of the fire and the crew’s sacrifice shook the space agency to its core; NASA somehow righted itself, ensuring that Grissom and his crew did not die in vain. Twelve humans walked on the moon between 1969 and 1971.

Gus Grissom’s inestimable role in Apollo, Gemini and Project Mercury is central to understanding the Space Race and the Cold War struggle between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. Grissom was an astronaut and a Cold Warrior. We tell his story in the forthcoming biography, Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom.

Unlike today’s media creations, Gus Grissom was an authentic hero, a man judged not by his words alone but by his deeds. He shunned the limelight and labored mostly behind the scenes to help America reach another world.

——-

[1] Walter Cunningham, The All-American Boys, updated iBooks paperback edition, 2004, pp. 64-65.

‘Calculated Risk’ Book Signing in Chicago

I’ll be signing copies of my forthcoming biography of astronaut Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom, during BookExpo America 2016 at McCormick Place in Chicago on May 11-13.

More details to follow. Look forward to meeting Gus’s many admirers in the Windy City.

‘Fire! We’ve Got a Fire in the Cockpit!’

On this date in 1967, a few ticks past 6:31 p.m. EST, a blowtorch fire erupted in the crew cabin of the Apollo 1 spacecraft during a launch pad test at Cape Canaveral, Florida, The spacecraft was pressurized with pure oxygen, the cockpit filled with flammable materials. All it took was a spark, almost certainly originating in faulty, exposed wiring.

The astronauts never had a chance.

Commander Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and crew members Edward H. White, Jr., and Roger B. Chaffee were asphyxiated despite struggling to the last to remove a heavy cork-like inner hatch. A fire was the last thing anyone expected during what was considered a “routine” test. It was anything but. Years of poor engineering decisions came home to roost on that fateful Friday evening.

The Apollo 1 tragedy would prove to be a critical turning point in the Space Race, forcing NASA to take a long, hard look at itself and the way it operated. A series of miscalculations beginning in the early 1960s had doomed the crew of the maiden Apollo flight.

Paradoxically, a preventable tragedy also ensured that the United States would reach the moon by the end of the decade as it had publicly proclaimed. The United States would not have reached the moon without the sacrifice of Grissom, White and Chaffee. The Apollo spaceship was completely overhauled, carrying 24 humans to the moon.

Commander Gus Grissom leads his crew across a catwalk connecting the Pad 34 service tower to his Apollo 1 spacecraft on the morning of a fateful “plugs-out” test on January 27, 1967. (Source: NASA)

A central tenet of the early days of manned spaceflight was the assumption of risk while at the same time doing everything possible to limit it. This is how test pilots worked, and Gus Grissom was among the best military test pilots and aeronautical engineers before becoming one of the original Mercury astronauts. Grissom was among those who decided the rewards of spaceflight were worth the risk.

That calculated risk is the central theme of my forthcoming biography of Gus Grissom, the first human to fly twice in space. The stories of Glenn, Armstrong and the other heroes deemed to possess “The Right Stuff” are well known. Less well known are the lasting contributions and ultimate sacrifice made by Gus Grissom to reach another world. As the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire approaches, we seek to tell the full story of the life and career of a determined astronaut who shunned the limelight while laying the foundation for visiting another world.