Apollo 1 and the Space Shuttle Challenger: The History of NASA's Two Most Notorious Disasters

As Apollo 11's name suggests, there were actually a number of Apollo missions that came before, many of which included testing the rockets and different orbital and lunar modules in orbit. In fact, it wasn't until Apollo 8 that a manned vehicle was sent towards the Moon and back, and before that mission, the most famous Apollo mission was Apollo 1, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

There were no delusions regarding the dangers of manned space travel, but they were brought home on January 2...