Achievements
Most people view the mission of Apollo 1 as a failure. It was not. The knowledge gained as a result of that tragic loss enabled us to successfully land a man on the moon, to gain the scientific knowledge that helps us to learn of our own world's history. Beyond even that, it led us to the shuttle program and the international space station and much that we have taken for granted in the years since the Fire.
What did we learn?
We learned to build a spacecraft hatch that could keep us safe in the harsh environment of space as well as allow us fast egress in case of emergency on the ground. We learned to develop a better communications system. We learned how to fire-proof the vehicle.
We learned to build a better spacecraft. We learned that there was much to gain from continuing the program.
"If we'd somehow avoided the fire, we would have flown an imperfect spacecraft and found flaws. We would have slowed down to fix them, flown again, and found more flaws. As delay piled on delay, I have the most serious doubts that we could have met Jack Kennedy's end-of-the-decade goal. Instead we dove deep into the spacecraft troubles and fixed them…. Good men died to force these results." (1)
Astronaut Dr. Sally K. Ride, in the August 1987 report to NASA on "Leadership and America's Future in Space": "there is considerable sentiment that Apollo was a dead-end venture, and we have little left to show for it." History, we believe, will reveal otherwise. Consider the following:
The program provided 400,000 government jobs and funded some 20,000 private contractors and subcontractors (employing more than 350,000 persons). Prior to and during the Apollo era, approximately 93 cents of every dollar of NASA's budget was spent with private industry. The computer hardware and software developed to land a man on the moon was put to use in developing solutions for major social and environmental problems that had allegedly been neglected due to the government's expenditures on the space program.
From the simulation trainers came the technology to measure emissions into our atmosphere. TRW, a leading simulation contractor, used its data to develop a pollution-monitoring system that was cited as the technical basis for state environmental protection laws. TRW also adapted the software from the Apollo program to protect the public from blackouts, fuel shortages, credit fraud, and traffic jams. Utilities used the company's spacecraft guidance program to regulate the flow of oil and gas pipelines and the output of electrical plants. Retail sales authorization systems were developed from the software. Banks used it to operate 24-hour automatic tellers.
In the field of medicine, lightweight composites invented for the spacecraft were used in making leg braces. Hospitals installed the Moon Rover astronauts' biomedical trackers on mobile carts to give more freedom of movement to partially disabled patients. Apollo telemetry systems were modified to transmit EKG data from ambulances to emergency rooms. Mass spectrometers designed to monitor crew respiration were adapted for surgical uses. A tungsten alloy, developed for the space program, was adapted and used by radiologists in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
Solar energy collection panels based on Apollo prototypes are widely used in the wheat belt for more cost-efficient grain drying. Lubrication techniques developed for aerospace engines were used in irrigation systems that helped farmers to increase harvests and conserve water supplies.
Freeze-dried foods that have been used on the war against hunger. Quartz crystal timing elements originally designed to guarantee the accuracy of the master clock at Mission Control were miniaturized and used in the wristwatches worn by so many of us today.
Other inventions made for the space program and adapted by private industry resulted in such things as studless snow tires, life rafts that would not tip over, scratch-proof eyeglass lenses, the 5-year flashlight, lightweight graphite composites in golf clubs, tennis rackets, and jet fighter fuselages. The drills used on the moon were adapted to develop cordless power hand tools. Optometry firms adapted the technology developed in inventing scratch-proof lenses for the Apollo space cameras to the manufacture of scratch-proof safety and athletic goggles. (2)
And what else did we learn?
We learned not to allow adversity to stop us. And we knew that canceling the space program would not honor the memories of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.