The Death of Gus Grissom: A Cover Up?

On January 27, 1967, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died during a test in the Apollo command module. The picture above shows the charred remnants of the module, which is currently locked up in a NASA vault. Grissom's son was once permitted access, and he found what he believed to be evidence of tampering. A metal plate had been added to a switch from the ship's external batteries. This caused the capsule's external power supply to become partially internal. Though the environment of the module had been pure (and highly combustible) oxygen, someone had allowed the initial power-on circuitry to ignite a spark inside the module, causing a fateful and horrifying  fireball - and a deadly fire.

Grissom had been a major skeptic of the Apollo missions from the beginning. The Apollo 1 mission was meant to test the command module in Earth orbit (the module that would orbit the Moon and provide a docking station for the Lunar module). Grissom had lamented the state of Apollo since the beginning, stating that "we might never make it to the Moon." Many hoax theorists claim that Grissom simply knew too much. NASA had to get rid of him, before he went public with his opinions about the Apollo program's ineptitude. What, exactly, did Gus Grissom know?

 

The deadly fire in Apollo 1 hadn't been the first accident for Grissom. Years earlier, in 1961, Grissom had become America's second man in space. When his capsule, the Liberty Bell 7 (pictured above), parachuted into the Caribbean, something strange happened. As the capsule hit the water, the escape hatch blew open. Sea water rushed in, and Liberty Bell 7 quickly sank. Grissom narrowly escaped the accident, but the Liberty Bell 7 capsule was lost for many years. Was this NASA's first attempt to kill Grissom? NASA blamed Grissom for the hatch accident, claiming he had blown it prematurely; but, every other Astronaut who had flown in a Mercury-style capsule had exhibited hand injuries from the hatch lever - Grissom had no such hand injuries.

Conveniently, Liberty Bell 7 was lost to the sea for many years - preventing any sort of investigation. NASA did not find the capsule. It was Curt Newport, and a team financed by the Discovery Channel, that eventually found Liberty Bell 7. The capsule is currently enclosed in glass at the Kennedy Space Center, as can be seen in the picture above.

Today, Grissom's son, Scott, claims that Gus was murdered by NASA. His theories about the Apollo fire were corroborated by an independent engineer, Clark MacDonald; but, Clark claims that NASA operatives destroyed his evidence, reports, and tapes, in order to keep the murder of Grissom a secret. NASA had hoped that MacDonald's research would prove NASA's innocence, but, instead, MacDonald had discovered the same evidence that Scott had.

Gus Grissom had been a senior Astronaut in the Apollo program, and he knew an awful lot about the Apollo technology and North American Aviation - the main NASA contractor for the program. Shortly before Grissom's death, Gus had taken a large lemon and placed it around the Apollo space capsule in full view of the press during an interview. Grissom had become outspoken about poor NASA technology, and had begun to make it clear that, in his opinion, NASA would never make it to the Moon. Gus said that NASA's chances of landing a man on the Moon were "Pretty slim."

Gus had received death threats during the period preceding the fire that killed him. He petitioned for, and received protection from, the Secret Service, because he feared that NASA wanted him dead. Gus told his wife that any nefarious accidents at NASA would probably involve him. 

After the accident that resulted in Gus Grissom's death, Thomas Baron had planned to testify, at a congressional hearing, that the Astronauts had tried to escape from the capsule much earlier than the official story indicated. Thomas was killed in a train crash before he could make those accusations.

Grissom had been one of the oldest mainstays of the NASA program. His negativity towards the Apollo program, and indeed the entire NASA space program, was something that NASA could do nothing about. NASA could not simply fire Grissom, because doing so would only give credence to Grissom's complaints and grievances. NASA finally rid one of its oldest hindrances with the Apollo fire. Did Grissom know too much? Would Grissom have gone public with all of his findings? Would he have eventually told the world that the Moon landings were faked, because of defective space technology? 

The year that Grissom had been killed, 1967, was a pivotal year for the Apollo space program. The program began during the mid-60s, and any inadequacies in the "mission to the Moon" had become plain to many Astronauts and civilians associated with NASA. Ted Freeman was killed in 1964, in a T-38 crash. The T-38 was (and still is) a supersonic jet used for training and military purposes. Eliot See and Charles Bassett were killed in the T-38 in 1966. Ed Givens was killed in a car accident in 1967. Mike Adams, though not an astronaut like the previous men, was an experimental test pilot for the X-15 NASA rocket; he was killed during a flight in 1967. Robert Lawrence had been scheduled to become part of an Orbiting Laboratory project (a canceled project), but he died in a jet crash in 1967 shortly before his NASA duty began. Civilians died too, possibly as a result of a larger NASA cover up. The aforementioned Thomas Baron was killed in a train crash shortly before his testimony could be given at a congressional hearing (that Grissom's crew had tried to escape the locked Apollo I module). Paul Jacobs asked the head of the US department of Geology about whether all of the Apollo Moon rocks had really come from the Moon, but the Geologist only laughed. Jacobs and his wife died of cancer 90 days later. Finally, Lee Gelvani was said to have convinced James Irwin, the Apollo 15 astronaut, to confess about a Moon hoax cover-up. Before he could go public with his confession, James Irwin died of a heart attack, in 1991.

Believe it or not, the above list of fatalities is not exhaustive. Many other people connected to the Apollo program died under mysterious circumstances - plane crashes, sicknesses, car crashes, and more. Was NASA looking for the perfect men to stage a Moon hoax? What did all of these men know? Did NASA really kill many of these astronauts and civilians?