Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Destroyed Apollo 1 Command Module

Destroyed Apollo 1 Command Module

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 21 Jun 2016 at 03:15:18 (UTC)

Original – This close-up view of the interior of the Command Module shows the effects of the intense heat of the flash fire which killed the prime crew during a routine training exercise. While strapped into their seats inside the Command Module atop the giant Saturn rocket, a wire bundle sparked and ignited flammable material. This quickly grew into a large fire in the pure oxygen environment. The speed and intensity of the fire quickly exhausted the oxygen supply inside the crew cabin. Unable to deploy the hatch due to its cumbersome design and lack of breathable oxygen, the crew lost consciousness and perished.

Reason

Before the United States could put a man on the moon it had to design a machine to get man to the moon, and the machine chosen for this was the Saturn V rocket. Unfortunately, as has always been the case with the new, there were issues with the design that needed to be addressed before the project could get off the ground. Sadly, discovering those issues usually entails the loss of life, and so it was with the Apollo Project as well. On January 27, 1967, during a launch simulation test, an unidentified ignition source (widely believed to be faulty wiring) caused the 100% oxygen in the cabin at the time to ignite. The resulting fire killed the three intended Apollo 1 astronauts and resulted in a major rebuilding of the Command Module design for future Apollo missions and new procedures to effectively respond to and deal with an emergency of this nature.

Articles in which this image appears

1967 in the United States, Apollo 1, Apollo program, Edward Higgins White, Gus Grissom, Joseph Francis Shea, Oxygen, Roger B. Chaffee, Space Race

FP category for this image

Wikipedia:Featured pictures/History/USA History

Creator

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (PD-USGov)

• Support as nominator – TomStar81 (Talk) 03:15, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
• Support per historical significance. Colonel Wilhelm Klink (^Complaints|_Mistakes) 19:35, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose – It has EV but as a stand-alone image it can be almost anything. I would support if the composition covered more of the surrounding area and showed some relation to the space program. Bammesk (talk) 02:05, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose – Per Bammesk. Seems a rather grisly scene that doesn't provide much EV. Sca (talk) 13:19, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
  • @Bammesk and Sca: Would a before and after be better here then - say adding something like File:McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart in preliminary training for Apollo AS-258 mission.jpg to the image so that people can get a better sense of what they are seeing? Or were you you two thinking of something more along the lines of File:Apollo 1's Command Module - GPN-2003-00057.jpg, which shows the whole capsule from a short distance as opposed to a close up so you can see the damage done? TomStar81 (Talk) 17:23, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but I'm not persuaded that a pic. of the charred module is worth featuring. Everyone who knows about or remembers this tragedy knows the three astronauts were killed; I'm not convinced that scene needs to be shown. Sca (talk) 18:22, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

• @TomStar81: Either the before and after, or this (which has some technical issues). I will weak-support either choice, but perhaps others will do full-support. Obviously the images have excellent EV, but there is technical/composition issues IMO. Bammesk (talk) 02:35, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose Per Bammesk – Jobas (talk) 20:08, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Not Promoted --Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 04:01, 21 June 2016 (UTC)