How did the Apollo 1 disaster impact astronomy community?

Answer 1

None at all. The Apollo 1 fire killed 3 astronauts. There were no astronomers aboard Apollo 1 when the fire occurred. Apollo was not an astronomic mission. Apollo's mission was to fly men to the moon to land upon its surface and return them to earth.

Within NASA, the Apollo 1 fire had the same basic effect that the Challenger and Discovery disaster had on the Shuttle program. Apollo was shut down for 18 months while investigators tried to locate the cause of the fire. No exact cause was ever found. What is known is that the fire began with a spark under Gus Grissom's couch. There were a lot of exposed wires inside Apollo 1, any number of which could have caused the spark that started the fire. Following the investigation, all flammable material was replaced with inflamable. wires were covered to make sure no spark would ever occur again. It is important to note here that lack of electricity meant that Apollo 13 was filled with humidity, much like sitting in a car with the engine turned off and the windows rolled up on a very cold day. Had it not been for the Apollo 1 fire and the redesigned wiring system, there's a good chance that Apollo 13 would have caught fire because the moisture behind the control panels would have shorted out the switches.

Also, the hatch was redesigned to make it easier to escape if another fire were to occur. The Apollo 1 hatch opened inward. It took almost 5 minutes for technicians to remove the bolts and open a normal Apollo hatch. In the case of Apollo 1, because of the heat and smoke, it took about 15 minutes to get the hatch opened. Because they had been dead so long, the doctors were unable to revive the astronauts. They did not die from the fire itself. The fire itself only lasted less than 10 seconds; easily survivable with their spacesuits protecting them. What killed the astronauts was the toxic smoke they inhaled. The fire melted the hoses that connected them to the oxygen system. They inhaled the smoke through the holes in the hoses. It is also worth noting that the reason for the bolts and inward opening design of the Apollo hatch was because during his Mercury flight, Gus Grissom's hatch blew off after splashdown and he almost drowned. The Apollo 1 hatch was designed to keep that type of accident from happening. In an ironic twist of fate, that fix is what led to Grissom's death and the deaths of his crewmates.