(left to right) Lt. Colonel Edward Higgins White (USAF), Lt. Colonel Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom (USAF) and Lt. Commander Roger Bruce Chaffee (USN) In Memorium Forty years ago today - January 27, 1967 - the men of Apollo 1 died in a tragic fire during a grounded test . In a what in hindsight was an amazing series of oversights, NASA learned the in the worst possible terms the cost of placing so many flammable items -- primarily plastics -- in an enclosed, pressurized, oxygen rich environment with partially exposed wiring, and moreover with inadequate means of escape for the crew. A needless waste of human life in the specifics of the incident, though the aims of the space program were noble and necessary to both the human spirit and that of the nation. In many ways what they were engaged in helped to make the 1960s perhaps the finest peacetime decade for the United States of America. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were each driven to greatness - and, yes, to the occasional tragedy -...