65: 1. Apollo 1 and Soyuz 1 Disasters: Rushing the Space Race. Bob Zimmerman discusses the major setbacks suffered by both nations in 1967. In January, the Apollo 1 fire occurred during a launchpad rehearsal, killing astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee. Th

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Arts, Society & Culture, Books, News

4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

1. Apollo 1 and Soyuz 1 Disasters: Rushing the Space Race. Bob Zimmerman discusses the major setbacks suffered by both nations in 1967. In January, the Apollo 1 fire occurred during a launchpad rehearsal, killing astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee. The cause was carelessness: a spark ignited flammable materials in the pure oxygen atmosphere, trapping the crew because the hatch could only be opened externally. Frank Borman led the honest investigation, which resulted in major safety fixes, including a quick-opening hatch and nonflammable materials. Concurrently, in April 1967, the Soviet program suffered a disaster when cosmonaut Komarov died during the descent of Soyuz 1 after his parachute lines tangled. Both nations realized they had been rushing. The Russians, however, adopted a conservative rule: no manned mission would proceed unless an unmanned test was 100% successful, a standard the Zond missions failed to meet, giving the Americans a decisive edge for Apollo 8.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm John Batchel with Bob Zimmerman, my longtime good colleague in the author of The Story of Apollo 8, Genesis,
0:12.3	the first man flight to another world. It is January, 1967. Apollo 1 is on the launch pad being checked out by three senior astronauts.
0:24.1	And then, Bob, this catastrophe is easy to remember for all of us who were watching at the time
0:30.2	because it was a blow to NASA.
0:32.6	It was a blow that had not been expected.
0:36.2	They weren't actually blasting off.
0:38.3	What happened, Bob, in Apollo 1?
0:40.7	It's interesting, John, but this was a case where they were not careful.
0:45.9	And that's why the failure happened.
0:49.2	This was a launch pad dress rehearsal countdown.
0:52.8	The three astronauts, Gus Griss from the commander,
0:56.5	Ed White, who is also an experienced astronaut,
0:58.9	he had done the first space, American Spacewalk,
1:01.3	and Roger Chaffey, who had never flown in space before.
1:03.8	These guys were in the capsule in their spacesuits,
1:06.1	and they were doing with mission control the equivalent of a dresser capsule countdown,
1:10.2	preparing for the first
1:11.4	Apollo mission on manned mission in orbit hopefully in 67 and at some point there was a spark in the
1:20.8	capsule and within less than a minute and a half those three men burned to death suffocated
1:26.7	mostly because the oxygen burned.
1:28.3	And there was no, the heat killed them as well as the lack of oxygen.
1:31.9	They were dead within 75 seconds.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.