1967
On New Year's Day, the Gators played Georgia Tech in the Orange Bowl beating them 27 to 12. Dad was a happy man. Like previous years with Uncle Bob called Mom on their common birthday January 16th. On January 27, 1967, tragedy struck the NASA Apollo program when a fire broke out in the Apollo 1 spacecraft while it was on the launch pad during a test killing all three astronauts, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee. It was gruesome, the fire started with and electrical short, with the capsule filled with pure oxygen it spread rapidly, burning insulation of the wires and spreading throughout the capsule. The support team got there quickly but the door of the capsule could not be opened from the outside due to the interior of the capsule being under pressure, the men were doomed. They think they died quickly from the toxic fumes from the burning insulation. The accident caused a twenty month delay of maned Apollo flight to make changes to the space craft to use fire resistant materials and allow the capsule door to be opened from the outside.
Updated: 09-28-2022