This is a repost of a December 10, 2008 posting after my visit to the Kennedy Space Center. I had not done my research for that posting and I have since deleted the original posting. This plaque is located in the Astronauts Memorial Garden, Kennedy Space Center, on the east coast of Florida Apollo Saturn-204 (commonly known as Apollo 1) was scheduled to be the first manned mission of the US Apollo manned lunar landing program, with a target launch date of February 21, 1967. That flight was not scheduled to orbit the earth but to launch and land in the south Atlantic Ocean. A cabin fire during a launch pad test on January 27, 1967, on Launch Pad 34, at Cape Canaveral, Florida took the life of all three crew members, Command Pilot Virgil Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee and destroyed the Command Module (see the lower right of the plaque). The astronauts deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal design and construction flaws in the early Apollo Command Module. The manned phase of the project was delayed for 20 months while these problems were corrected. The name Apollo 1, chosen by the crew, was officially retired by NASA in commemoration of them on April 24, 1967. I was a member of the US Navy Helicopter Anti Submarine Squadron Five (HS-5), that was already heading south to be on station for the recovery of Apollo I, between Brazil and the Ascension Islands, roughly halfway between South America and Africa. Forty six years later and it is still a memory that I can not get out of my mind. Three of the twenty four astronauts that lost their lives in the US Space program. The X-15, T-38 and F-104 were the planes that the men of the left side of the plaque were training in or in the case of the X-15, it was a test flight. Verified most of this data on Wikipedia, NASA and other web sites. Thanks for stopping by, taking a look and for all your previous favs and comments. They are very much appreciated. Dana