This is John Batcheler, conversation with my good friend Bob Zimmerman, his book, Genesis, The Story of Apollo 8,

the First Man Flight to Another World, in December of 1968.

However, going back to the catastrophe of 67,

or Apollo 1, when three very brave astronauts

getting ready for their first flight or burned to death inside

the capsule couldn't get out in time. Flashfire. The investigation goes

forward and it is a success in that NASA knew immediately it had

become as Bob describes careless. Here's Bob Zimmerman to establish the thinking before the risk that we now know as Apollo Wade, the very careful

thinking that had not been done before.

Bob Zimmerman, more of this later tonight.

For NASA itself, and this is why they got careless.

This is what Borman said.

We had been so successful before that we started to get lazy.

We didn't look at what we were doing closely. You know,

what do you call it, the hubris? It's a fault of human nature.

You've got to constantly question yourself especially when comes to

engineering and they got talent and it was a blow to them but it was a positive

blow because they did the thing you must do when you make a mistake you admit error you're open

about admitting the error you tell yourself and everyone what the error was and

then you fix it and this this is an honesty that differentiates NASA then with today.

There was no problem at NASA fixing this problem.

There was no argument.

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