Grissom . . . White . . . Chaffee. . . . They bought the farm right on the pad, cooked in the silvery furnaces of their spacesuits, killed in a practice run before they could ever know the surge of their great Apollo craft driving upward to orbit. But put these astronauts high on the list of the men who really count, three men with the square and almost sissy names of Virgil and Edward and Roger who had the presumption to believe the earth was mostly a marvelous launching platform, a great place to leave for an adventure. Think about them, about how they were always willing to force themselves past the point of danger and deep fatigue to perfect their understanding of the machines they flew. It is the oldest sort of irony that they must have known instant ly the exact nature of the monstrous mistake that killed them. For them, no more cries of "Wow, what a view!" No more phone calls from the President. They will not see their wives and the children meeting them.
Grissom ... White ... Chaffee....