S8 Ep954: (8) Bob Zimmerman concludes by revisiting the Apollo 1 catastrophe, where three astronauts died due to "hubris" and careless engineering on the launchpad. This failure forced NASA to adopt total honesty, resulting in critical safety redesigns like the
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 โข 2.8K Ratings
๐๏ธ 1 June 2026
โฑ๏ธ 10 minutes
๐๏ธ Recording | iTunes | RSS
๐งพ๏ธ Download transcript
Summary
(8) Bob Zimmerman concludes by revisiting the Apollo 1 catastrophe, where three astronauts died due to "hubris" and careless engineering on the launchpad. This failure forced NASA to adopt total honesty, resulting in critical safety redesigns like the new hatch and atmosphere. Simultaneously, the Soviet program suffered its own tragedy with the death of cosmonaut Komarov during Soyuz 1's re-entry. These setbacks forced both nations to slow their pace and prioritize rigorous testing. The guest notes that without these disasters, a moon landing might have occurred in 1967, but the resulting caution ultimately shaped the success of Apollo 8.
๎๎ป๎ป๎น
๎
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel with Bob Zimmerman. His book is Genesis, The Story of Apollo 8, the first man flight to another world. |
| 0:07.1 | Two and a half hours after the TV broadcast reading from Genesis is the trans-Earth injection. What is that, Bob? |
| 0:16.1 | This is where we get to the lack of redundancy on the SPS engine, this is the moment Susan Borman dreaded |
| 0:22.5 | the most. They're in lunar orbit. They've got to fire the SPS engine on the service module |
| 0:28.3 | to speed up, leave lunar orbit, and head back to Earth. There is no redundancy on the SPS |
| 0:34.0 | engine. If it doesn't work, they're stuck in lunar orbit and they're going to die there. |
| 0:38.9 | Just imagine, science fiction of the ultimate, they would be run out of air. And of course, |
| 0:43.5 | they knew that if that was going to happen, they could just open the hatch and die quickly. |
| 0:47.1 | But even way, they would die. So it had to work. And it was like going into lunar orbit as well. |
| 0:53.5 | The burn of that engine would occur on the backside when the the orbit was on the back side of the moon, which means no communications with the Earth. And so everyone knew they've been in lunar orbit for 20 hours. They're going around the moon, and it's near midnight on Christmas Eve, and they're circling around behind the moon, they disappear, |
| 1:12.5 | and they're going to be out of touch for an hour. |
| 1:16.2 | And sometime during that period, we know they're going to fire the engine. |
| 1:18.3 | Do the astronauts know about the firing? Can they hear it, Bob? |
| 1:23.9 | Remember, there's no air in space, but the engine is attached to their spacecraft so when they fire |
| 1:29.2 | the engine they hear the vibration but it's not like a roar it's more like a buzz because it's coming |
| 1:34.8 | through the body of the the spacecraft there's no atmosphere outside so you don't hear a roar so it's like a |
| 1:40.1 | buzz the vibration that they can hear on their instrument panel is there a metric that tells them that it's fired correctly? |
| 1:47.6 | Yeah, when the engine, they set their computer using those numbers that were dictated to |
| 1:52.6 | them to fire at the right time. |
| 1:54.8 | Bormann had his hand on the button so that he could, if the engine didn't fire, he'd press |
| 1:59.0 | it himself immediately. |
| 2:00.5 | And his hand |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 20 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
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.
Copyright ยฉ Tapesearch 2026.