Why did roger chaffee die

In , Chaffee nearly washed out of his flight training when he failed an eye test. A sympathetic physician told him to come back the next morning for another try. After taking a long walk on the beaches of Lake Michigan that night, Chaffee returned the next morning and passed the vision test with flying colors, according to his NASA biography. As an undergraduate at Purdue University, Chaffee met his wife, Martha, while teaching a mathematics class.

They married in August, , the same month in which he completed his naval training. Chaffee had a successful career as a Navy flyer, most notably flying planes that identified Soviet installations in Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis.

In , he joined 1, applicants for the second round of NASA's astronaut selection process. Astronaut Edward H. White, II rides life raft in the foreground as astronaut Roger B. Chaffee sits in hatch of the boilerplate model of the spacecraft during water egress training in a swimming pool at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas. Courtesy NASA. In , while on a hunting trip in Michigan, Chaffee learned he was being admitted to the prestigious space program.

At 28, he was the youngest person selected by NASA. He was assigned to follow the spacecraft's communications systems. As an astronaut, Chaffee joined an elite fraternity of national heroes, whose public adulation was fed by Life magazine's exclusive access to them. While they were not paid much, the Life magazine contract allowed the family to build a new suburban home, next door to fellow astronaut Gene Cernan.

In March , Chaffee was named to the first Apollo mission. He was the first astronaut to win a post on a "prime" crew without first serving on a backup crew.

There's no other way to explain it. When he starts talking to engineers about their systems, he can just tear those damn guys apart. I've never seen anyone like him. But the flames aboard the space capsule cut his promising life short. The three men are remembered in history not for their space flight but as being the first on-duty fatalities for NASA.

It was p. The simulation, according to newspaper reports at the time, had started in the morning on Jan. The astronauts entered the spacecraft at 1 p. The hatch was closed at p. At p. Emergency crews had the Apollo doors opened in 5 minutes but were confronted with intense heat and dense smoke. Grissom was the second American to fly in space. He was the pilot of the second Project Mercury flight on July 21, , and the command pilot of Gemini 3 on March 23, The Gemini mission made three revolutions around the earth.

White was the first American astronaut to walk in space. He was the pilot of Gemini 4. Chaffee was preparing for his first space flight. The astronauts were preparing for a Feb. After the Apollo disaster, NASA overhauled the Apollo spacecraft with a quick-release hatch, removing everything flammable from inside the module and no longer using pure oxygen.

The irony that these men, whose goal was the moon, should die only feet from the ground was hard to bear. Kennedy announced his goal to get astronauts to the Moon before It involved research into long-term space travel and served as preparation for the Apollo program. However, Chaffee eventually earned the title of "crew member" when he was selected to fly to space with the Apollo 1 mission, then called AS Joining the crew alongside fellow astronauts Gus Grissom and Edward White, Chaffee was set to put his extensive training into practice as the chief communications expert for the mission.

Chaffee took this role seriously, and while he and his colleagues were surrounded by flames during the preflight test, Chaffee continued to report the conditions over the radio, though the situation could not be controlled and none of the astronauts were able to escape.

Although Chaffee's career and life were cut short, he remains as one of NASA's most influential astronauts and his legacy transformed not just the Apollo program but human spaceflight overall. Chaffee would have been the youngest man to fly to space had the Apollo 1 mission been successful, according to NASA. Although he was unable to fulfill this achievement, the fateful event did result in critical safety changes being made.

These changes helped the first people to successfully and safely land on the Moon and return to Earth two years later in For example, the capsule hatch was altered so that the door could open outwards quickly for a fast and easier escape.

During the catastrophic Apollo 1 pre-launch test, the cabin atmosphere was percent oxygen. To reduce the chances of fires taking place again, this was changed to be a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen, according to the BBC. Additionally, the spacesuit that Chaffee wore during the pre-launch test was made of flammable nylon netting.