Apollo 1 / 204

[Count Zero]

Numerous sources state that the spacecraft that killed three astronauts on January 27, 1967 was known as "Apollo 204", and that it wasn't renamed "Apollo 1" until after the accident. However, photographs of Grissom, White & Chaffee show them wearing "Apollo 1" patches on their spacesuits. What gives?

[ETA]1,000th post! Woot!

[Czero 101]

The official NASA mission number was AS-204 for Apollo/Saturn 204.

From Wiki - Apollo 1 - Naming of Apollo 1

Naming of Apollo 1

When North American Aviation shipped spacecraft CM-012 to Kennedy Space Center it bore a banner proclaiming it as Apollo One. Grissom's crew had received approval for an Apollo 1 patch in June 1966 but NASA was planning to call the mission "AS-204." After the fire, the astronauts' widows asked that Apollo 1 be reserved for the flight their husbands never made.

Apollo 1's (AS-204) Saturn IB rocket was taken down from Launch Complex 34, later reassembled at Launch Complex 37B and used to launch the Apollo 5 LM-1 into earth orbit for the first Lunar Module test mission.

Effect on early Apollo mission names

For a time mission planners called the next scheduled launch Apollo 2. There were also suggestions the first Apollo CSM flights be named wholly out of chronological sequence as Apollo 1 (AS-204), Apollo 1A (AS-201), Apollo 2 (AS-202) and Apollo 3 (AS-203) but the NASA project designation committee decided on Apollo 4 for the first (unmanned) Apollo-Saturn V mission (AS-501), with no retroactive renaming of earlier missions. Hence, AS-203 is now sometimes informally (and chronologically) referred to as Apollo 2 and likewise, AS-202 as Apollo 3.

Cz