Chafee, Grissom & White:

Today is the anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire. I was not old enough to appreciate the importance of the event when it actually occurred, but I imagine it was much like the Challenger disaster. Some people cared, and most did not. Space is a dangerous place, and the equipment we use to get there is complicated, cranky, and built by the lowest bidder. I certainly don´t put the entire blame for the event on the contractor for the command module, because the process of designing, building and testing all of the components of Apollo was a very interactive process between private industry and government. Sometimes, these lessons are very expensive. This theme will be continued tomorrow (above) with the Challenger incident.