Grissom died during a routine simulated flight, aboard Apollo 1. He had been nervous about Apollo 1. Over 20,000 test failures of the spacecraft cabin and engines had been recorded. A week before the accident Grissom hung a lemon to show his opinion of the craft.

When Grissom and his fellow astronauts sealed inside the Apollo command module, a fire started, it turned the cabin into a death trap, and killed all 3 men in minutes.

Five factors contributed to the fire: many flammable materials that produced deadly gas; unprotected electrical cables; unprotected tubing which held flammable and crossive coolent; not many places for the astronauts to escape; and no fire or emergency crews on duty.

Starfall was a biography about Virgil "Gus" Grissom it was written by his wife Betty, and Henry Sill, and published in 1974.