“The Fire” — A Case for System Safety

January 27, 1967 is a day that those of us involved with the Apollo 1 program will never forget. This was the day the command module fire at the “Cape” took the lives of three highly trained, experienced astronauts. This mishap occurred during a manned simulated space operation within the Apollo 1 space capsule while it sat atop the unfueled Saturn launch vehicle sitting upright on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Because the rocket tanks had only inert gases in them, by NASA safety protocol, this was considered a “non-hazardous” test event.