Walter M. Schirra Jr., One of the Original Seven Astronauts, Is Dead

ABC News ^ | May 3, 2007 | By NED POTTER

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Walter M. Schirra Jr., One of the Original Seven Astronauts, Is Dead

Schirra Commanded Three Missions Leading to Moon Landings

By NED POTTER

May 3, 2007

Walter M. "Wally" Schirra Jr., one of America's original seven astronauts, has died at the age of 84, said NASA.

Schirra, said NASA, died of natural causes.

Chosen from the Navy to become one of NASA's Mercury astronauts in 1959, Schirra went on to become the first man ever to make three flights in space.

Schirra was a jovial man and a serious pilot. "Levity is appropriate in a dangerous trade," he once said in a Life magazine profile.

"It was impossible to know Wally, even to meet him, without realizing at once that he was a man who relished the lighter side of life, the puns and jokes and pranks that can enliven a gathering," said NASA's administrator Michael Griffin in a statement. "But this was a distraction from the true nature of the man. His record as a pioneering space pilot shows the real stuff of which he was made. We who have inherited today's space program will always be in his debt."

In 1962 Schirra flew a Mercury spacecraft, which he named Sigma 7, on a six-orbit flight around the Earth.

In 1965, as commander of Gemini 6, he performed the first rendezvous in orbit with another spacecraft -- Gemini 7 -- which was already on a 14-day endurance flight. It was a complex, delicate maneuver -- one considered essential if Americans were going to make it to the moon.

Along with his co-pilot Thomas Stafford, Schirra brought his ship within six feet of Gemini 7, flown by astronauts Frank Borman and James Lovell. They flew in formation at 17,500 miles an hour, 185 miles above the Earth's surface.

Mercury, Gemini and Apollo

Schirra's final flight in October 1968 was the first manned test of the Apollo spacecraft that would ultimately take astronauts to the moon. Colleagues agreed that merely climbing into the cabin of Apollo 7 took nerve. Three astronauts had died in what would have been the first Apollo spacecraft to fly; they were trapped in a flash fire during a test on the launch pad in January 1967. The ship was completely redesigned.

Schirra and his crewmates, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham, spent 11 days flying Apollo 7, sending back the first television pictures from an American spacecraft, complaining about head colds -- and restoring NASA's confidence that it could meet President John F. Kennedy's mandate to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

"Those early pioneering flights of Mercury, the performances of Gemini and the trips to the moon established us once and for all as what I like to call a spacefaring nation," Schirra later wrote. "Like England, Spain and Portugal crossing the seas in search of their nations' greatness, so we reached for the skies and ennobled our nation."

Schirra was born and raised in northern New Jersey and in the suburbs of New York City, and fell in love with flying. He bicycled from home in Oradell, N.J., to nearby Teterboro Airport, and already knew how to fly when he went to college at the U.S. Naval Academy.

After he left NASA in 1969, he worked as a television commentator during the Apollo moon landings, served on corporate boards and was an engineering consultant. He retired to Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., near San Diego.

With his passing, only two of the original seven astronauts -- John Glenn and Scott Carpenter -- are still alive.

[JerseyJohn61]

“The Right Stuff” is going in the VCR after the Met game
tonight. One of my all time faves.

My older sister had the great fortune of meeting him back
in the 70’, while he was working for nearby JOHN’S MANVILLE.
He was in the lounge of a hotel near an industrial campus.
It was one of my sister’s after-work crew’s normal watering
hole stops.

She claimed that he kept a substantial crowd in continuous
stitches. Also Wowed everyone with his yarns of the space
programs.

Always having been a big space program fan, I remain
jealous of my sister to this day. God love and hold you
Wally. A Great, Great American....JJ61

[Mr. Silverback]

Godspeed to a great American.

[Coleus]

Astronaut Walter Schirra dies at 84

AP

The astronauts of the Apollo 7 crew are shown at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., in this Oct. 11, 1968 file photo. From left to right are R. Walter Cunningham, Commander Walter Schirra, Jr., and Donn F. Eisele. Schirra has died, NASA said Thursday, May 3, 2007.

 Astronaut Walter Schirra dies at 84

 From Oradell to outer space

 Sights & Sounds: Walter Schirra, 1923-2007

Walter M. Schirra Jr., one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts and the first New Jerseyan to travel in space, died Thursday. He was 84.  His family said he died of a heart attack at a hospital in La Jolla, Calif., not far from near his home in Rancho Santa Fe.  Born in Hackensack and raised in Oradell, the irrepressible Schirra, a former Navy test pilot, was the only man to fly on all of NASA's first three space missions -- Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.

On Oct. 3, 1962, he became the fifth American space traveler and the third to orbit Earth when he piloted the Sigma 7 Mercury flight, which encircled the planet six times over 9 hours and 15 minutes.  "I'm having a ball up here drifting," he said during that flight.   Three years later, Schirra commanded Gemini 6, which rendezvoused with the already orbiting Gemini 7 -- the first rendezvous of two orbiting spacecraft.

And in 1968, Schirra was command pilot on Apollo VII, which paved the way for the first mission to the Moon the following year.  Shea Oakley, executive director of the Aviation Hall of Fame and Museum of New Jersey in Teterboro -- which inducted Schirra in 1982 -- said Schirra was a "unique character" renowned for his sense of humor.

Oakley noted, however, that Schirra wasn't feeling that humorous during the 4.5 million-mile Apollo VII mission because he and his crew mates, R. Walter Cunningham and Donn Eisele, all suffered from bad colds.  "NASA programmed a ton of tests for the astronauts to do, and Schirra stood up to Mission Control and said, Hey, you're making us do too much up here," Oakley said.  "They backed down, because Schirra was the commander of the mission, and he was there, and they weren't."

[PAUL REVERE TODAY]

Yes, I know they gave Americans a great deal of pride at that time, even though I did not experience it. They were heroes and explorers. I love that NASA era; i romanticize it.