APOLLO DISASTER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31341, 11 April 1967, Page 17

APOLLO DISASTER

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WASHINGTON, April 10. Serious defects in the Apollo lunar project may have cost the United States first place in the race to put a man on the moon. A Government report on the fire—which swept a dummy moonship on its Cape Kennedy launching pad on January 27, killing three astronauts—has said the Apollo spacecraft must be redesigned. The 3000-page report, issued yesterday by the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, condemned safety and other precautions taken during the ground test in which the astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee died. “Adequate safety precautions were neither established nor observed,” the report said. Moon Race Delay

The long-awaited findings of the board of inquiry into the disaster means that the first three-man orbital flight —a major milestone on the road to the moon—will be delayed at least a year, possibly two.

The report was unable to pinpoint the exact cause of

the fatal blaze at the Florida space centre, but said it was probably due to an electrical short in bruised or broken wiring. It also said: “The Apollo team failed to give adequate attention to certain mundane, but equally vital, questions of crew safety. "The board’s investigations revealed many deficiencies in design and engineering, manufacture and quality control. “When these deficiencies are corrected the over-all reliability of the Apollo programme will be greatly increased.” The board said that there were six conditions which led to the disaster—a sealed cabin pressurised with pure oxygen; vulnerable wiring carrying power to the spacecraft; vulnerable plumbing carrying a corrosive coolant; a large amount of combustible materials in the cabin; inadequate provisions for crew escape; and inadequate provisions for rescue or medical assistance. President Johnson said last month that the United States still hoped to land a man on the moon by the target date of 1970.

But space experts said it was impossible to say how long it would take to carry out the improvements detailed in the report They believe there is now little hope of landing an

American on the moon by the 1970 deadline.

The report, accompanied by 200 photographs, was the outcome of a 10-week investigation into the disaster.

It published the first taperecorded cries of alarm from the astronauts and told how the last sound from the spacecraft was a cry of pain 17 seconds later.