“Are you confident in us?”
This image shows the charred interior of the Apollo 1 Command Module; Apollo astronauts Gus Grissom (the second U.S. citizen to reach space), Edward White (the first U.S. citizen to perform a spacewalk) and Roger Chaffee lost their lives during a routine training exercise, the result of a flash fire. The disaster prompted an investigation, during which Borman testified in Congress. In response to a question about NASA’s future safety measures, Borman answered: “We are trying to tell you that we are confident in our management, and in our engineering, and in ourselves. I think the question is really: Are you confident in us?”
