Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations Danlap on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Apollo 1 Fire: January 27, 1967

Status
Not open for further replies.

racookpe1978

Nuclear
Feb 1, 2007
5,984
Lest we forget: People can get killed through combined failures of seemly un-related things: Testing under rushed, poorly prepped "live" conditions, flooded oxygen environments, crowded and poorly run electric wires and cables, hatches not easily opened under internal pressure, ....

No design or management decision by itself "wrong" but all of them in sequence with each other? Each decision led to 3 deaths.
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

"hatches not easily opened under internal pressure"

That's being extremely kind...

Also goes to show that multi-point failures are not uncommon, just as with the Challenger disaster

TTFN
faq731-376
7ofakss

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529
 
Yea, my roomate my sophomore year (which was 1966/67), his fiance's father supplied most of the wiring used in the Apollo capsule and he almost lost his company from the fall-out after the disaster. They never proved that the wiring his company provided contributed to the fire, but there was enough blame to go around so that all of the program suppliers took a hit to one degree or another.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
 
I have Gus Grissom's and Ed White's autograph. I met them as a little kid in cub scouts, at the Millington Naval Air Station. That fire and their deaths really knocked me for a loop.

Best to you,

Goober Dave

Haven't see the forum policies? Do so now: Forum Policies
 
The 3 major NASA accidents all took place in late January, early February.

Apollo 1 - January 27, 1967
Challenger - January 28, 1986
Columbia - Fevbruary 1, 2003

All three were from different reasons and all shutdown space flight while root causes and fixes were applied.

Let's all remember those who lost their lives for the space program.


"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli
 
It was a very poor decision to use O atmosphere; even the Russians said it was too dangerous (the people who built nukes without containment vessels.
 
Also goes to show that multi-point failures are not uncommon, just as with the Challenger disaster
When you mention multi point failure I think about the Piper Alpha. 167 crew dead. A lock-out procedure and a $2 lock could have prevented this.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor