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Death could have come in any number of bizarre ways. In the explosion of an errant rocket in the view of millions on TV; in the instant incineration of a capsule out of control during the treacherous reentry into the earth's heavy atmosphere; in the coffin of a malfunctioning craft unable to descend that orbits, orbits, orbits in the spatial void while power ebbs and life leaks away in slow suffocation.
But the first three U.S. astronauts to die on duty were motionless and earth-bound when they were killed last week. With helmet faceplates closed and suits pressurized, they reclined in a row on padded couches in their cylindrical Apollo capsule, running through the countdown of a simulated launch, a routine but rigorous rehearsal for the real thing. They had been there 5 hrs. 31 min. when fire exploded in the cabin. Within seconds, Lieut. Colonel Virgil
Grissom, 40, Lieut. Colonel Edward White, 36, and Lieut. Commander Rog- er Chaffee, 31, lay dead in the charred cockpit of a vehicle that was built to hit the moon 239,000 miles away, but never got closer than the tip of a Saturn rocket, 218 ft. above Launching Pad 34 at Cape Kennedy.
Workaday Fatalism. Sixteen times the U.S. has rocketed men far into space without so much as a stubbed-toe casualty. There had been the heart-stopping suspense of Alan Shepard's first flat-arc flight in 1961, the terrifying uncertainty of John Glenn's reentry into the atmosphere in a heat-seared Mercury craft in 1962, and Gus Grissom's hairbreadth escape from drowning when his Liberty Bell 7 was swamped in the Atlantic. Then came the miraculously flawless series of ten Gemini trips, in which Americans repeatedly broke all records for survival in space, strolled blithely out into that brutal environment, and navigated their craft through the incredibly delicate maneuver of tracking down and docking with another vehicle in the vast reaches of the heavens.
Everyone feared, and some had warned, that some day, somewhere, such a string of luck would have to snap. The astronauts have always approached their jobs with the workaday fatalism of men who live with death at their elbows. When John Glenn returned from his harrowing trip, he cautioned: "We are going to have failures. There are going to be sacrifices made in the program; we have been lucky so far." Grissom himself said in words that may long be remembered: "If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
Though it happened under circumstances that, theoretically, are no more hazardous than the car ride to the Cape, the fact that Grissom, White and Chaffee lost their lives on the ground has a symbolism all its own. For even more important than the down-played dedication, the casual-seeming courage and the nonchalance under pressure that the astronauts bring to bear in actual flight is the drilled-in professionalism, perfectionism and thoroughness that they must have to master the incredibly intricate tools of their trade. They are heroic pioneers, but they are also brilliant technicians—and they could not be astronauts without being both.