This is part 2 of the documentary series "Washington Goes to the Moon." It is called "Trials and Fire" and it looks at the fire on board Apollo 1 that killed three astronauts and nearly derailed the space program. Today we understand better than ever that the exploration of space is a risky business. The explosions of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 made that clear. But in 1967, most Americans saw space as nothing more than a big adventure. The danger seem beyond imagining. In this program we go back to the disaster that almost derailed the Apollo Program and America’s drive to put a man on the moon; the tragedy of Apollo One. We look at how the fire revealed deep flaws in a NASA management structure that businesses and governments around the world viewed with envy and how NASA's attempts to cover-over those flaws fed into Congressional distrust that almost crushed the Space Program.
Washington Goes to the Moon Part 2
