Written By: Ben Cosgrove

Men and women have been rocketing into space from the Earth’s surface for the past half-century — long enough that much of the general public now views space missions as relatively safe, rote endeavors. Sure, inconceivably complex and technically nuanced projects like setting an SUV-sized state-of-the art roving laboratory on the surface of Mars — without breaking it — can still grab the world’s attention. For countless people, however, when it comes to manned missions like the discontinued Space Shuttle program or flights to and from the International Space Station, the thrill is long gone.

But the business of space exploration is not, and has never been, safe. Explosions, fires, parachute failures and other disasters have left scores of astronauts, cosmonauts, test pilots and crew workers dead and wounded through the years. Some (Challenger and Columbia, for example) are spectacular, terrifying catastrophes. Others are smaller, quieter calamities — but for anyone involved who survives, injured or not, the experiences are life-changing.

Here, LIFE.com recalls one of the worst disasters in NASA’s history — and its first public tragedy — when astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a fire inside their command module on a Cape Canaveral launchpad on Jan. 27, 1967. As TIME’s Jeffrey Kluger (the author of Apollo 13) once wrote, when commemorating the three astronauts:

Test pilots can sense straightaway if they’re working with a good vehicle or a bad one, and the Apollo 1 crew . . . knew almost immediately that they’d been assigned to a stinker. By late 1966, the last of the sturdy, two-man Gemini spacecraft had flown, and NASA was rolling out the three-man Apollo ships that would, at last, carry men to the moon. The spacecraft were sweet-looking machines, but in test-runs on the pad, they were a mess. The electrical system fritzed, the communications died, repairs and upgrades were late in coming. . . . Most worrisome, however, was NASA’s insistence on continuing to use 100% pure oxygen in its atmospheric systems an explosively flammable gas that had worked fine so far in the Mercury and Gemini ships but that could burn like gasoline in the presence of so much as an errant spark . . . Early one Friday evening, when the Apollo 1 astronauts were locked down in the spacecraft for a practice session out on the pad, just such a spark got loose from a frayed wire next to Grissom’s seat. In less than a minute, all three men were dead. For a while, it seemed, the Apollo program would perish too.

The program, of course, survived, and less than three years after the 1967 launchpad fire, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins flew Apollo 11 to the moon and back — leaving human footprints on the lunar surface — in what some consider the signature triumph of the 20th century.


 

Workers at North American Rockwell plant assembling the Apollo 204 module.
Ralph Morse Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

American astronauts Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom in the Apollo Mission Simulator, a replica of the capsule in which they died.

Apollo 1 Astronauts Grissom, White, Chaffee

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Readying for Apollo I tests, Cape Canaveral, Fla., 1966.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Apollo I astronauts (l-r) Roger Chaffee, Ed White and Gus Grissom, Fla.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Apollo 1 astronauts (l-r) Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, photographer the week before the fatal fire at Pad 34, from which their mission was to have launched in February 1967.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Apollo 1 astronauts Roger Chaffee, Ed White and Gus Grissom, 1967.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Apollo 1 astronauts (front to back) Roger Chaffee, Ed White and Gus Grissom, Cape Kennedy, Fla.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Roger Chaffee with his wife Martha and their children, Sheryl and Stephen, in their Houston home, 1965.

Roger Chaffee and Family, 1965

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Astronaut Ed White leaps off a truck before an attentive audience of his fellow astronauts during a training exercise, 1963.

Astronaut Ed White

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

In a husband-and-wife appearance before the press, Pat and Ed White (far left) and Pat and Jim McDivitt share delight with the news that President Johnson has promoted the astronauts after the flight of Gemini 4 in 1965.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

NASA astronaut Ed White and his wife Pat at home.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

During a family work-out on the horizontal bar, Bonnie Lynn and Eddie White compete against their father, astronaut Ed White.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Astronaut Edward White and family, Houston.

Astronaut Ed White

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Astronaut Edward White and family, Houston.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Astronaut Gus Grissom in his space suit.

Gus Grissom

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Gus Grissom often found relief from the pressures of being an astronaut simply by going fishing. He casts for sea bass near Cape Kennedy.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Astronaut Gus Grissom with his sons.

Gus Grissom and Sons

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Home a hero after his successful 1965 mission in Gemini 3, [Gus Grissom] greeted his parents who came from Mitchell, Ind. for the flight.

Gus Grissom and Parents

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Gus Grissom at home with his son.

Gus Grissom and Son

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

114363332.jpgGus Grissom with his wife Betty and their sons Scott and Mark.

Apollo 1 Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesE

Apollo I and II crews

Apollo I and II Astronauts

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

LIFE magazine, February 3, 1967

LIFE magazine, February 3, 1967

LIFE Magazine

LIFE magazine, February 3, 1967

LIFE magazine, February 3, 1967

LIFE Magazine

LIFE magazine, February 3, 1967

LIFE magazine, February 3, 1967

LIFE Magazine

LIFE magazine, February 3, 1967

LIFE magazine, February 3, 1967

LIFE Magazine

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LIFE Magazine

140123-Apollo-1-Grissom-White-Chaffee-26

LIFE Magazine

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