In article ,
says...

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

Of course the US safety record during those early years of spaceflight
was not much better. The "waste anything but time" mantra also meant
glossing over safety issues when it was expediant. Knee jerk reactions
like making Apollo Block I's hatch open inward "solved" one safey issue
while creating another and that was hardly the only issue with the Block
I's. Also, using a pure O2 atmosphere for a ground test at a relatively
high pressure was insanity.

RIP Grissom, White, and Chaffee.

Yeah, and arguably Vokshod 2 was similar with their spacewalk.

As for the O2 thing, it's sort of like foam hitting the shuttle tiles.. or O
ring burnthrus...
People far too confident in their analysis based on past history. "nothing
went wrong last time."

Actually they should have known, from aircraft experience, that pure
oxygen at (relatively) high pressures during a ground test was a very
bad idea. They thought controlling ignition sources would be "good
enough" when in hindsight that approach was bound to fail. Also, doing
the test with the CSM in a vacuum chamber, so that the spacecraft
pressure would have been at the nominal 5 psi (I think) would have been
the way to go (and I believe such tests were done, but I'm not going to
Google it at 7:00 a.m. to double check). Doing that test on the pad at
KSC was dumb in hindsight.

Also, they made the Apollo CSM and LEM atmospheres pure oxygen to save
mass. The N2, extra tanks, and all the equipment to handle it
(including making the spacecraft pressure vessels thicker and heavier)
would have added mass they didn't think they could afford. And as the
spacecraft grew in mass over initial predictions, they were right. But
luckily, the Saturn team didn't believe the initial mass estimates and
made the vehicle a Saturn V instead of a Saturn IV (numbered according
to the number of F-1 engines on the first stage).

Jeff
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