Apollo 7 rose on a pillar of flame from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 34 on October 11, 1968. The launch was not just the achievement of a single mission but confirmation that NASA had recovered from the searing setback of the Apollo 1 fire that had killed three astronauts 21 months earlier. Overlooked today, Apollo 7 was an indispensable test of NASA's redesigned moon ship. If the crew could demonstrate the spacecraft's performance, the success would jump-start a rapid sequence of missions—four in eight months—leading to a lunar landing. Failure would likely forfeit any hope of reaching John F. Kennedy's goal for a moon landing by 1970 and open the door to yet another Soviet space triumph.
Crew of the Phoenix
The deaths of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee in the January 1967 launchpad fire forced NASA and contractor North American Rockwell to scrutinize and refine the design of Apollo 7's spacecraft 101, an improved model of the command and service modules. The forced stand-down gave engineers time to install a quick-opening crew hatch, a planned upgrade that hadn't made it into Apollo 1. They scrubbed the cabin of ignition sources and flammable materials and added emergency breathing masks and a fire extinguisher.
