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Open-End Mission. As it was planned, the flight of Apollo 204 would have tested both the mettle and the technology of the three astronauts beyond anything that men had yet experienced in space. On Feb. 21, the capsule was to be fired off the ground by a Saturn 1-B rocket to go into orbit for as long as Grissom, White and Chaffee could take it, an "open-end" mission that marked a bold departure from the rigidly limited space flights of the past. It was to be essentially an engineering flight, a manned shakedown for the Apollo systems, which had already twice been fired aloft without anyone aboard. If things went well, Apollo 204 would lead to two other manned flights later this year, and then, possibly as early as 1968, to fulfillment of man's ancient vision of a landing on the moon.
The Apollo, built by North American Aviation, is by far the biggest, most sophisticated space vehicle ever made. It is to the Gemini what a Boeing 747 is to a DC-6—roomy enough for a man to stand erect and move about, equipped with space luxuries such as hammocks for stretched-out sleeping, hot and cold water, even a toilet.
The cone-shaped ship consists of two sections or modules. In the top section, Command Pilot Grissom, Senior Pilot White and Pilot Chaffee occupied three cockpit couches looking up at the ship's maze of controls—gauges, dials, switches, lights and toggles. The service module below is essentially an engine room, housing fuel, the crew's oxygen, the basic electrical system, and a large rocket with 22,500 Ibs. of thrust to be used for space maneuverings, braking the ship into lunar orbit and supplying the propulsion necessary to send it back to earth. The whole capsule is 34 ft. long, weighs about 30 tons when fully fueled. Ultimately, the Apollo will also carry a lunar module, a buglike, rocket-powered ferry that two astronauts will board for the last-leg descent to the moon's surface, while the main capsule cruises in waiting orbit.
Countdown-Minus-10. At 1 p.m. on Friday last week, Grissom, White and Chaffee strolled casually into the gantry elevator on Pad 34, rose swiftly to a sterilized "white room," then ambled along the 20-ft. catwalk to the stainless-steel hull of the capsule, now secured to the Saturn rocket inside the launching complex. The craft was like an old friend, for they had spent hours in it during vacuum-chamber tests in the Houston Space Center, had run through identical launch-simulation procedures several times before.