Today marks the day of the Apollo 1 fire that claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee during a routine test at the Kennedy Space Center.  At 1pm on this day in 1967, the crew entered the space craft to perform a plugs-out test in order to determine whether the command module could operate independently on internal power.   At 6:31:04pm, the crew gave the first indication of a fire;  17 seconds later, an explosion ruptured the command module.  The crew had no hope of escape.

As a photographer, and someone who cares deeply about the space program, I felt compelled to do something to remember the crew and their courage.  I therefore decided to create the photo above of the crew as a tribute and memorial.

About the image editing:
Most of the work done on the original image (below) was with cleaning up scratches and dirt, and color adjustment.  Topaz Denoise and Adjust were used to reduce noise and balance the exposure.  I also decided to straighten the image which led me to crop it somewhat.  While I did crop it, I did maintain the original aspect ratio of 4:5.

The original image: