Virtually no one ever heard the Apollo 1 tape until NASA at last lifted the classification as part of a broad release of Apollo-era recordings in 2018, and the recording found its way to the Internet. It is barely 20 seconds long, but once heard, the sounds from the spacecraftWhite shouting, Hey, we've got a fire in the cockpit!; Chaffee emitting a raw and awful death crycan never be unheard. The recording is deeply primal, deeply personal, and never should have been declassified.
It is to the credit of the movie Fly Me to the Moon, a new comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum about faking the Apollo 11 moon landing, that it opens with the fire and, in effect, a tribute to the lost astronauts. It is to the movie's supreme discredit that it uses the actual recordingnot once, but twiceviolating the lost men's privacy in the service of a Hollywood confection.
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