The statute of limitations for wrongful death for survivors was two years and had expired, said Ronald D. Krist, the Houston lawyer who represented Ms. Grissom. But the general negligence statute was four years and had not expired, allowing her to sue for Mr. Grissom’s pain and suffering. She settled for $350,000, or about $2.2 million in today’s dollars.

Her action brought Ms. Grissom considerable grief, with strangers accusing her of being unpatriotic and the close-knit space community shunning her.

The experience embittered the family, said Mark Grissom, who was 13 when his father died.

“We got the dark side of NASA,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “People who were my friends were no longer my friends. A lot of people turned their back on us, and Mom got a lot of hate mail. They were like, ‘How dare you sue NASA?’ We were no longer part of the NASA family.”

Mr. Krist said that NASA had forwarded her a note from one critic who said that Ms. Grissom should not be filing a suit because her husband had assumed a certain amount of risk by being an astronaut.

But Mr. Krist, a product-liability lawyer, said the astronauts had a right to expect that their capsule would be properly designed and that all prudent precautions would be taken to protect them. “The capsule was anything but fireproof,” he said.

In any case, Mr. Krist said, the suit made it easier for the families of the other two astronauts who were killed to receive compensation without having to go to court.

“Despite the criticism, she never flinched,” Mr. Krist said of Ms. Grissom. “She never regretted the lawsuit and never hesitated in her commitment to see it through.”