MANNED APOLLO FLIGHTS The manned Apollo flights were preceded by testing, which began on May 28, 1964. Tragedy struck the
program on Jan. 27, 1967, when fire erupted in the Apollo 1 Command Module while a crew was performing a
flight simulation. Dense fumes from burning plastics fatally suffocated Col. Virgil I. ("Gus") Grissom, Lt. Col. Edward H. White II, and Navy Lt. Comdr. Roger B. Chaffee. Investigation revealed that the fire was caused by the electrical arcing of a short circuit in the cabin. The arcing ignited normally fire-resistant plastics that became flammable in the pure oxygen atmosphere of the cabin. On Oct. 11, 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo flight, was boosted by a Saturn 1B into low Earth orbit from the Kennedy Space Center. Aboard were Navy Capt. Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Air Force Maj. Donn F. Eisele, and Walter Cunningham, a civilian test pilot. During the 11-day
mission the three crewmen suffered from head colds, and friction over the work load developed with Mission Control at Houston. The Apollo CSM functioned with only minor problems. The flight demonstrated that the vehicle was spaceworthy for the duration of a lunar mission. On the second manned Apollo-Saturn flight, Apollo 8, Col. Frank Borman, Lt. Col. William A. Anders, and Navy Capt. James A. Lovell flew ten orbits of the Moon on Dec. 24, 1968. The crewmen took turns reading aloud from the Book of Genesis, and their words were broadcast worldwide over the NASA communications network. The eight-day mission (Dec. 21-28) served as a reconnaissance for landing sites. On Apollo 9 (Mar. 3-13, 1969), Col. James A. McDivitt, Col. David R. Scott, and a civilian pilot, Russell L. Schweickart, tested the Lunar Module in Earth orbit and practiced docking with it. The Lunar Module was then tested in lunar orbit on the Apollo 10 flight (May 18-26). Col. Thomas P. Stafford and Navy Comdr. Eugene A. Cernan piloted the Lunar Module to within 15,000 m (50,000 ft) of the lunar surface on May 22, while Navy Comdr. John W. Young remained in the orbiting Apollo CSM. Stafford and Cernan jettisoned the Lunar Module's descent stage and burned the ascent stage engine to rejoin the Apollo mother ship. An informal practice of using names to distinguish the Lunar Module from the Apollo when they were separated was begun during the Apollo 9 and 10 tests and was formalized during the landing missions. The Apollo 9 CSM was called Gumdrop and the LM, Spider; the Apollo 10 CSM was Charlie Brown and the LM, Snoopy.