'Apollo 1' director surprised by details of ill-fated mission in new documentary

It was the opening scene of the 1995 feature film "Apollo 13" and was recreated for the Neil Armstrong biopic "First Man" more than 20 years later. It was one of the catalysts for the Soviet Union to land the first human on the moon in the Apple TV+ alternate history drama "For All Mankind" and was a factor in recruiting Scarlett Johansson's character to improve NASA's image in the 2024 movie "Fly Me to the Moon."

And it was a turn in the life of Eugene Cernan as retold in the 2014 documentary "Last Man on the Moon," directed by Mark Craig.

"We covered a little bit of Apollo 1 in that film because Gene Cernan and the Chaffees were next-door neighbors, and Gene looked after Martha and the family for a while afterwards, so it was relevant. But Martha said so much more than we could use in that film, and I was thinking, 'My god, I've never heard this before. You know, there's a story to be told, if the families are up for doing it,'" said Craig in an interview with collectSPACE.com.

On Saturday (March 15), the Boulder International Film Festival hosted the world premiere of "Apollo 1," Craig's new feature-length documentary about the three NASA astronauts who were killed on Jan. 27, 1967, when a fire tore through their spacecraft during a pre-flight test on the launch pad.

"Nobody's ever fully told their story, and it should be told," said Craig. "NASA was okay with it now, but the families [of the fallen astronauts] were the most important people to have in the film."

Related: Apollo 1: The fatal fire

It took a couple of years, but Craig eventually arranged for the participation of at least one family member of each of the three Apollo 1 crewmates. Martha and her daughter, Sheryl, share stories of Roger Chaffee, the rookie astronaut assigned to the mission. Lowell Grissom speaks about his brother, Mercury astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom, who was commander of Apollo 1. And Ed White III and his sister Bonnie recall their father, who two years prior to the fire became the first American to conduct a spacewalk.

"You have to appreciate that, for a lot of people, any trauma like that, irrespective of whether it's related to spaceflight, it lives with you for the rest of your life. It's a very traumatic moment that I was asking people to revisit and to share, and that was a big thing," said Craig.

The film also features astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who before helping to test the Apollo lunar module in Earth orbit was backup to Chaffee on the Apollo 1 crew.

"In addition to the families, for me, the big catch was Rusty, because as one of the guys on the backup crew, he could bring to the film something that nobody else could. And he obviously did," said Craig.

While the documentary does spend time on the fire itself, including playing back the last audio recorded of the crew, a large portion of the film is dedicated to the astronauts' lives prior to the tragedy.

"It's not an investigative documentary, unpacking all that happened. I think that is already out there," Craig told collectSPACE. "It was important to me to portray how these three men lived, not just how they died."

In the process, Craig sought out footage that had not been seen by the public in decades. In one instance, he came across photos of White delivering a speech at the Alamo after his history-making Gemini 4 spacewalk in 1965.

"And I thought, somewhere, there's got to be some footage. So I dispatched our archive researcher," said Craig. "To his credit, he found it, but it was still on a roll of film. It had never been transferred or digitized to the kind of media we need now."

"I was really glad to find it, though, because I really wanted the audience to understand just how famous these guys were. And I think at that time, Ed White must have been one of the most famous people on planet Earth. You know, that spacewalk was a hell of a thing," Craig said.

Another discovery involved the retreat that the Apollo 1 prime and backup crews went on to work out the procedures for the flight.

"When Rusty hit us with that one, I literally fell out of my chair," said Craig. "And if you don't mind, I'd rather not even mention it here, because I want it to be a surprise for the audience when they hear it."

Related: Ed White: The 1st American to walk in space

Ultimately, the greatest shock may be how many of those who see "Apollo 1" knew of the astronauts and the tragedy before watching, said Craig.

"I was really surprised to find that there was this lack of knowledge, not just about Apollo 1, but the space program in general. Projects like this film now have to serve younger audiences who weren't around then and who don't know this stuff," he said. "I want people to really understand that [the race to the moon] was a huge undertaking in a really compressed time period, an unwieldy infrastructure without the benefit of emails and internet and all of the stuff we take for granted."

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