Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries (50 page)

In an atmosphere containing a higher percentage of oxygen or a higher pressure the oxidation rate is greatly increased. It is well known that a pile of oily rags in an oxygen environment will burst into flame. In 100 percent oxygen any hydrocarbon or carbohydrate becomes potential fuel needing only a small spark or increase in heat to set it off.

THE TEST

On January 27, 1967 astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee approached Pad 34 where an obsolete model of the command capsule had been installed on top of an unfueled Saturn 1B rocket.
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This was the same type of rocket that had carried the smaller and lighter Gemini capsules. The capsule itself was already outmoded and would be replaced before any Apollo missions were launched.

However this was a full "dress" rehearsal. But somebody neglected to tell the maintenance people to clean out all the extremely combustible extraneous construction materials. The urgency of this test was simply that they were scheduled for a manned mission that had been repeatedly postponed. As we will see later, NASA had every intention of sending Apollo I, Grissom's mission, into space even though neither that Saturn V (actual moon rocket), nor the Apollo capsule, had ever actually been tested in space.

Would you not have smelled a rat? Perhaps Grissom was a bit worried because he got Wally Schirra to ask Joe Shea. NASA's chief administrator, to go through that with him. "Grissom still wanted Shea to be with him in the spacecraft. "
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Shea refused because NASA couldn't patch in a fourth headset in time for the test. Is that likely?

It is difficult to believe that this couldn't have been done in the 24 hour time frame available. If I had a crew of technicians who couldn't install another headset-jack in that amount of time I'd fire the whole damn crew.

The original Apollo capsule had different hatches, but by 1300 hours all three astronauts were strapped in their acceleration couches with the new hatches sealed behind them. It was later revealed that these hatches were so poorly designed that even with outside help and in a non-emergency situation, it took seven or eight minutes to open them. They were originally supposed to spend a few hours practicing throwing the proper switches at the right time in sequential response to computer simulations. However, with delay piled upon delay and everyone in a hurry, each time a switch was thrown, unnoticed by any, tiny sparks jumped.

During the test of the Apollo capsule on Pad 34 Grissom and his crew were in 100 percent oxygen simulating the real thing. In fact they reported a burning smell a few times earlier that day. When that happened technicians would come with "sniffers," open the hatches, but find nothing. One wonders if the review board considered that these hatch openings flushed out the smell with the fresh air admitted by opening the hatch. These incidents delayed the test and time was running out.
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The extraneous combustible materials may have been combining with the pressurized oxygen each time pure oxygen refilled the cabin. Oxidation makes heat, and if you stop the process that heat remains in the material. Each time you repressurize the craft the combustible material will be at a slightly higher temperature. I sense that the board of review missed this angle.

I also feel that spontaneous combustion would have been much too subtle for the CIA. If it was a CIA hit they would have done it with an electric squib or incendiary device wired to a switch programmed to be thrown toward the end of the test.

While the testing was going on, some mastermind in mission control decided to save some time. In his wisdom that unknown leader made the decision to speed up the testing. As the board of inquiry later noted, "To save time, the space agency took a short cut." What he did was simply order the capsule to be pressurized with 100 percent oxygen at either 16.7 or 20.2 psi. Notice, that no name was used. The entire agency takes the blame.

I have great difficulty in believing that apparently not one of these rocket scientists in Control, nor the astronauts themselves, knew that, a Calorimeter Bomb consists of a combustible material, pressurized oxygen and a spark. These were highly educated men, men with technical degrees, men who had taken chemistry courses, and men who must have spent some time around welding and cutting torches that used oxygen.

Also I cannot understand why Grissom et al entered that capsule in the first place if they knew it was to be pressurized with oxygen over 14.7 psi. For example in a hospital no one is allowed to smoke in a room where oxygen is in use. In this situation we have only a small section of a room with tiny amounts of low pressure oxygen being used. Yet everyone seems to know of the danger. Grissom was a test pilot and engineer while both White and Chaffee had degrees in aeronautical engineering. Apparently not one of them complained. Didn't anyone know about Calorimeter Bombs? Didn't NASA send them copies of the fire reports? Or maybe no one told them they were jacking up the pressure!

At 1745 hours (5:45
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.) Grissom was getting angry with the communication people for a static filled on again-off again communication system. At one point he ragged them "How do you expect to get us to the moon if you people can't even hook us up with a ground station ? Get with it out there. "
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In the meantime around 6
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. Collins had to attend a general meeting of the astronauts. Let Collins tell you about it in an incredible single paragraph:
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On Friday, January 27,1967, the astronaut office was very quiet and practically deserted, in fact. Al Shepard, who ran the place, was off somewhere, and so were all the old heads. But someone had to go to the Friday staff meeting, Al's secretary pointed out, and I was the senior astronaut present, so off I headed to Slayton's office, note pad in hand, to jot down another week's worth of trivia. absence, Don Gregory, his assistant Deke wasn't there either, and in his presided. We had just barely gotten

started when the red crash phone on Deke's desk rang. Don snatched it up and listened impassively. The rest of us said nothing. Red phones were a part of my life, and when they rang it was usually a communications test or a warning of an aircraft accident or a plane aloft in trouble. After what seemed like a very long time, Don finally hung up and said very quietly, "Fire in the spacecraft." That's all he had to say. There was no doubt about which spacecraft (012) or who where (Pad 34 Cape Kennedy) was in it (Grissom, White, Chaffee) or or why (a final systems test) or what

(death, the quicker the better). All I could think of was My God, such an obvious thing and yet we hadn't considered it. We worried about engines that wouldn't start or wouldn't stop; we worried about leaks; we even worried about how a flame front might propagate in weightlessness and how cabin pressure might be reduced to stop a fire in space. But right here on the ground, when we should have been most alert, we put three guys inside an untried spacecraft, strapped them into couches, locked two cumbersome hatches behind them, and left them no way of escaping a fire. Oh yes, if a booster caught fire, down below, there were elaborate if impractical, plans for escaping the holocaust by sliding down a wire, but fire inside a spacecraft itself simply couldn't happen. Yet it had happened,

and why not? After all, the 100 percent oxygen environment we used in space was at least at a reduced pressure of five pounds per square inch, but on the launch pad the pressure was slightly above atmospheric, or nearly 16 psi. Light a cigarette in pure oxygen at 16 psi and you will get the surprise of your life as you watch it turn to ash in about two seconds. With all those oxygen molecules packed in there at that pressure, any material generally considered "combustible" would instead be almost explosive.

Here Collins reported that the pressure was 16 psi. Other authors went higher. A staff meeting at 6
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. on Friday night? Do you have a feeling that this Friday night staff meeting was the first and last in the long history of our government bureaucracies?

THE FIKE

At 6:31:03
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., one of the astronauts smelled smoke and yelled fire. The capsule had suddenly turned into a Calorimeter Bomb. They tried their best to open the hatch. Without panic the triple hatch that sealed them in usually took about nine minutes to open. They didn't have nine minutes. In fact, they barely had ninety seconds before their suits burned through and the deadly poisonous gasses released from the plastics silenced them forever.

The capsule's internal pressure soared from the great quantity of hot gasses created by the quasi-explosive burning of all the combustible material. This short term fire was so intense that it melted a silver soldered joint on the oxygen feed pipe pouring even more oxygen into the conflagration.

At 6:31:17, fourteen seconds from the first smell of smoke, the pressure reached 29 pounds and the capsule ruptured, effectively releasing the heat and damping the fire. But it was too late. They were already dead.

Let me put in some additional questions here. If this was not murder and just an example of extreme stupidity in governmental slow motion why did government agents in rapid action, raid Grissom's home before anyone knew about the fire? Why did they remove all his personal papers and his diary? Why didn't they bring his diary, or any other paper with the word "Apollo" on it back, when they returned some of his personal papers to his widow? And if it really took 29 psi to blow the cabin why didn't they use regular air at higher pressure?

Also was it really the vicissitudes of life that the outward opening hatch was coincidentally changed that very morning to one that opened inward? An inward opening hatch meant that any inside pressure, acting outward, would prevent it from being opened—even if someone was standing by, which they weren't. It was also boiled up from the outside and lacked explosive bolts.
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THE AFTERMATH

NASA should have known better. And they did! You have read earlier of the men injured in flash explosive fires in their own tests. NASA had even commissioned a report by Dr. Emanuel M. Roth which was published in 1964. Dr. Roth cited difficulties with 100 percent oxygen atmospheres even under low pressures. Any competent engineer should have known the dangers of oxygen at 16.7 or 20.2 psi. This is why I cannot believe that this was "standard operating procedure," or that Grissom and his crew knew that about it. NASA not only ignored their own tests on pure low pressure oxygen but upped the ante by increasing the pressure above atmospheric.

Kennan and Harvey had this to say, "Most U.S. scientists could not believe their ears when they learned that fact. Oxygen at such pressure comes in the category of an 'oxygen bomb.'"
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A Board of Inquiry termed "The Apollo 204 Review Board" was quickly convened to investigate the fatal fire by appointing astronaut Frank Borman as the chairman. In effect, NASA sent the fox into the chicken house to investigate mysterious disappearances of the occupants. The board's final report was about what you might expect when an inhouse investigation investigates itself: "One key to the caution which reveals itself on every page of the Board's report is that it was written by government employees. Thompson himself was director of the space agency's Langley Research center, and no fewer than six of the eight Board members were NASA officials."
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The pressure of 16.7 psi is quoted from Journey to Tranquility where the authors wrote that they learned the pressure of the pure oxygen in the capsule was 2 psi over atmospheric. Collins reported it as nearly 16 psi. It seems strange that NASA told two insiders, Borman and Collins, plus the authors of Tranquility three different capsule pressures? Apparently NASA, like the rest of us find it almost impossible to keep all the little white lies straight. And if it's a group lie we get the results shown in this book.

Borman writes that, "We brought in every learned mind we could enlist—including a chemistry expert from Cornell . . ."
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Didn't this expert know that oxygen has a deep and forceful desire to breed little oxides by passionately mating with hydrocarbons and carbohydrates? Didn't this "so-called" expert tell them that?

Borman, played dumb when he was called before Congress. In testifying under oath he said, "None of us were fully aware of the hazard that existed when you combine a pure-oxygen atmosphere with the extensive distribution of combustible materials and a likely source of ignition . . . and so this test... was not classified as hazardous."
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And if Borman was as unaware of all the dangerous fires that erupted during NASA's own safety tests over the years why did he later write about 20.2 psi oxygen in this manner, "That is an extremely dangerous environment, the equivalent of sitting on a live bomb, waiting for someone to light the fuse. "
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Aldrin in his 1989 book, Men From Earth written twenty-two years after the cremation has this to say, "As every high school chemistry student learns, when a smoldering match is put into a beaker of oxygen, it blazes into a spectacular flame."
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He (Aldrin) continues by telling us how there was a multitude of switches and miles of electrical wiring all of which were easy to short and could act as a match. "But the risk was considered acceptable because, in space, the astronauts could instantly depressurize their cabin . . ."
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Hey Buzz, didn't you claim that the reason your EVA [extravehicular activity] on the Moon was late in starting because it took so long to vent the last of the oxygen from the LEM?

Say what? Borman, who held a Masters in engineering and taught thermodynamics at West Point claims nobody was aware of the danger! After all these years Aldrin now claims he knew. Obviously, either Borman is lying or Aldrin didn't have the guts to open his mouth.