So, 50 years after the fire that killed 3 of our early astronauts, NASA has put the hatch of the capsule they died in on display. http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/nasa-displays-apollo-capsule-hatch-50-years-after-fatal-fire/ar-AAmf1z9

I was just curious if any of you were alive and remember that incident. What was it like on the news, how were people talking about it, what did people think of our space program as a result, etc.

Of course I remember.
First a little "edumacation " here. You have to understand that we did not have any 24/7 news with panels and panels of experts and talking heads. For space coverage we had Peter Jennings...ALL we had was the newspaper , a 30 minute local news ( ch 13 was an hour back then I think ) and the 30 minute national show...thats IT ! So we didn't really get any in depth reports except for the occasional 1 hour special. " Events" did not dominate our lives and our discussions like they do today.
NOW..
The fire was widely regarded as a huge tragedy that was our first setback but we were in the heat of the space race and in the middle of space mania. The fire was looked at as a part of the process. Remember we saw multiple explosions in the run up, kind of understood better than today that progress required risk. We looked at the Astronauts as military heroes thereby used to risks...Quite frankly the prevailing theme was .." how fast can we solve this issue so we can get back to flying again and get to the moon " OF course we mourned the heroes . ( I kinda knew Ed White) but there was little , if any, hand ringing and calls for for the program to end. NASA took a bit of a black eye and it was a wake up call but the race to the moon was a national endeavor of heroic proportions. It was not just a science project it was a national military and American superiority objective to get to the moon before the damn russians. Loss was acceptable.
NASA expected failures in the Mercury program and the Apollo program. I think they were amazed at just how successful those programs were. We went from damn near blowing up everything we tried to launch to a hugely successful Mercury program in less than a decade.

I remember watching it on the CBS news and being very in tune to it because my dad was part of the space program. I was quite saddened and shocked, similar to when Challenger blew up. Yes, lots of missiles had blown up on the pad and shortly after liftoff but no one had died, that was very sobering. Goes to show how successful (or lucky) Mercury and Gemini were. It seemed like forever before there was a launch again after that event, prior to that, they were getting pretty routine almost like the Shuttle missions were but with a little more excitement due to the newness of man in space.

Was alive but only 3 years old. I do remember the Apollo Moon shots though. Yes it was amazing that we did not lose more Astronauts than we did. Launches became so common place that they news barely mentioned them during the Space Lab and Shuttle years. That is why it was such a shock when the Challenger blew up. THAT just didn't happen. And we nearly another 20 years before the Columbia.

I was in second grade at the time, and it was quite a shock (I had been avidly following the Gemini program that had concluded just a couple months prior to The Fire.)

If you get a chance, read the memoirs of some of the astronauts who talk about The Fire and the events that led up to it: "Last Man on the Moon" by Gene Cernan, "Schirra's Space" by Walter Schirra, and "Forever Young" by John Young have some interesting perspectives. Cernan says that just about everyone at NASA, astronauts included, were infected with what he called "Go Fever," and this attitude was part of the chain of events that led to The Fire. Schirra placed some of the blame on the bidding process that awarded the contract for the command module to North American rather than Martin, which he said had scored higher on technical points.

I was a month shy of 4, and vaguely remember it. Remember watching the news with Mom and Dad.

There was some sort of song, a tribute sort of thing. Mom got it on 45, I played that thing over and over.

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I kinda knew Ed White

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That's pretty cool. I don't remember anything else of it, but the last line of that tribute song was "Ed White, what a sight he saw, what a brave and lucky guy. Now he walks forever more across the sky."

Yeah, it was hokey, I guess. It was a different time.

I was 11 and lived in South Houston at the time. NASA was a big deal. We were close enough to Clear Lake for my parents to drive down there on the weekend to see all the construction, the astronauts' homes, etc. It was a fascinating time. We had what I would call a "hyper" vigilance about the space program.

As 76 and 78 have said we had already witnessed mechanical failures, delays and such but no loss of life. It was truly shocking and hard for me to grasp, at 11, why something couldn't have been done to save them. News then wasn't what it is now and kid life went on. There was never any doubt that we would put a man on the moon before the 60's ended. No doubt at all. A time of great hope and possibilities.

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If you get a chance, read the memoirs of some of the astronauts who talk about The Fire and the events that led up to it: "Last Man on the Moon" by Gene Cernan, "Schirra's Space" by Walter Schirra, and "Forever Young" by John Young have some interesting perspectives.

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Last Man on the Moon is currently on Netflix. It's a pretty good documentary.

Of all places (I am 51 so I have only vague memories of the space program) I was in Vietnam watching a Discovery documentary on the US Space effort and NASA.

While watching it I went through a whole gambit of emotions. A few times I reared up like a big baby and the 3 astronaut burning up was one. They had played the recording of the moment. After that Boeing came in and centralized all of the efforts of all of the different contractors and helpped saved the program. It was almost an impossible feat what they did.

As I said I watched in awe throughout the whole showed. Remembering bits and pieces as the show went on. I could feel the pride the country felt, the crystal clear focus on the mission at hand and re acquaint myself with the huge space program apparatus that existed and the effort that supported it.

Then at the end as the credits went by I felt anger that the Houston was robbed of having a Space Shuttle permanently displayed at the NASA Mission Control.

Remember it vividly. The astronauts were my heroes and their deaths, especially Gus Grissom, hit me hard. Two changes came from that tragedy. One was revising the hatch to open outward instead of inward. The pressure from the heat build up kept the astronauts from opening the inward opening hatch. The second change was replacing the 100% oxygen atmosphere in the capsule with a normal nitrogen oxygen mix atmosphere. Had a normal atmosphere been present in the capsule, the fire would never have happened.

I was 15 and remember it quite well. It happened on my brothers birthday.
As point out, we did not have 24/7 news w/all the pundit taking heads...thank God.
At that time not really understanding the setup on the capsule, I wondered why they just couldn't open the door and get out.
Horrible way to die.

The fire happened three years before I was born but I grew up in Clear Lake (El Lago to be exact) and attended Ed White elementary which was named after one of the astronauts who died in the fire (obviously).

It was a great neighborhood to grow up in back in the 70s and 80s, we had many astronauts living around us.

No but I remember the Apollo 11 blast off. I saw it from my front yard in Cocoa, FL.

Remember it vividly. Horrible. My first father-in-law worked in NASA admin, and told me details later on. Very sad day for the space program.

DevilD77 said:

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Remember it vividly. The astronauts were my heroes and their deaths, especially Gus Grissom, hit me hard. Two changes came from that tragedy. One was revising the hatch to open outward instead of inward. The pressure from the heat build up kept the astronauts from opening the inward opening hatch. The second change was replacing the 100% oxygen atmosphere in the capsule with a normal nitrogen oxygen mix atmosphere. Had a normal atmosphere been present in the capsule, the fire would never have happened.

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How could this have happened with all the experts working on this ?

It was a question of weight on liftoff of having two tanks of oxygen and nitrogen versus just one of oxygen. The Saturn V boosters would have to get two tanks versus one off the ground and into orbit. They really did not go away from the 100% oxygen for the later missions, with the exception of during lift off when a small nitrogen tank was added for mixed air on the ground and the initial liftoff. After that it went to 100% oxygen for the duration of the mission.

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After that it went to 100% oxygen for the duration of the mission.

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Mind you, once in space the cabin atmosphere was O2 at 5 psi. A very different proposition from O2 at 16 psi (which it had been for the many hours of the "plugs out" test on 1/27/67, in order to keep outside contaminants from getting into the spacecraft).