Wally Schirra Dead at 84

UglyTool writes "Wally Schirra, the only astronaut to have flown on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, died of a heart attack at a hospital in San Diego. Wallyschirra.com has much more on the man, his life, and his contributions to the American Space Program."

Comments

We'll also miss his sense of humour

[rbrander]

In "The Right Stuff", Tom Wolfe noted that Shirra was the one who almost laughed himself out of the space program.

Much of the book was about the transition of the image of test pilot from "fighter jock", basically a blue-collar, manually-skilled guy who was a "natural stick & rudder man" to the white-collar scientist/robot who lived by the checklist.

Neither was true of anybody, certainly, but at least one story in the book of a flight shared by pioneer Chuck Yeager and new kid Neil Armstrong underscored the difference between the generations.

The Mercury Seven all had to kind of be both to make the cut; command respect from their fellows and the Old Guard in general as natural flyers, and also be respected by the German scientists and Washington bureaucrats running the new space program.

Wally had an irreverent and irrepressable sense of humour that was loved by the old gang and very, very nearly got him shut out by the new, who basically wanted another computer in the capsule, an utterly reliable component with as few "human" characteristics as possible.

Wally helped make sure it was humanity with all its strengths that became "Man in Space".

Re:Wally Shirra was an Old School Astronaught bada

[VWJedi]

Interesting parallel, but a bit misleading. Certainly the novelty has worn off of orbital spaceflight in a similar way to the novelty of transoceanic flights in the early 20th century, but some major distinctions remain:

• Commercial viation has reached a much greater level of safety than spaceflight.
• The number of commercial pilots is great enough that you probably have met one even if you didn't know it (a neighbor or a friend of a friend). The number of astronauts (and where they tend to live) means that you are unlikely to randomly encounter one if you don't live in south Texas or east Florida.
• Although you may not be able to name someone who has flown themselves across the Atlantic, you probably can name someone who has gone on a trans-Atlantic flight. (Not all astronauts are pilots.)

All those things combine to make commercial aviation much more "routine" to the public than spaceflight.

Only man in all three programs

[Lurker2288]

Schirra was the only astronaut to fly missions for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. And the Apollo flight he commanded, which was the first one after the pad fire that killed the crew of Apollo 1, was conducted at a time when a lot of the astronauts still considered the Apollo craft to be a death trap. But they still went, and it was the success of their test flight that gave NASA the confidence to send the second manned Apollo mission all the way to lunar orbit in 1968.

Possibly second?

[necro81]

Wally Schirra, the only astronaut to have flown on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions....

One could almost argue for Gus Grissom to be on that list, too. Second Mercury flight, first Gemini flight, and the commander of Apollo 1. Unfortunately, since Apollo 1 burned on the pad before ever leaving the ground, killing Grissom and his two crew, I guess Schirra stands alone.

Re:Possibly second?

[jesterzog]

Well Grissom was in the Apollo programme, but strictly speaking it the mission he died in wasn't called Apollo 1 until after the accident. Before that, it was AS-204, and Apollo 1 would have been the flight they went on later. (This is my understanding of it at least, and I welcome corrections.)

Re:From a different time

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting this anonymously for soon to be obvious reasons. Wally did not die from a heart attack. He died from an rare form of asbestos poisoning. I don't know why everyone is talking about "natural causes" or Heart attacks but he died from what he was exposed to for his entire Navy and NASA carreer's.

I've known Wally for many years and he would not hold this against the Military or NASA but to flat out lie about it would offend him. Asbestos was the best that they had to keep people alive. Everyone used it and it did save lives. There is absolutely no reason to be upset when asbestos effects people that were exposed to it 40 years ago. And that is the only reason I can think of for them to be hiding the truth about this great mans death.

anonymous

An Astronaut's Astronaut

[Spencerian]

Since many posts have taken the opportunity to take pot-shots and cheap jokes about the astronaut program, I'll take time to recommend one docudrama on this astronaut's fine history: HBO's "From The Earth to the Moon" has a beautifully comprehensive episode called "We Have Cleared The Tower" on the events of getting the first Apollo test launch in space, and Wally's efforts to keep "Go Fever" from causing many of the same problems on his Apollo 7 that ultimately killed the Apollo 1 crew. Mark Harmon plays Schirra, and there are many good performances that fairly accurately detail the training, launch setup and pre-flight.

After Scott Carpenter's near-disasterous Mercury flight (where he nearly exhausted his maneuvering fuel, jeopardizing his life on re-entry, and landing 250 miles off-target), Schirra's Sigma 7 mission put the project back on-course with textbook operation and completion of mission objectives, and was a highlight to the necessity of human input in spaceflight.

In terms of spacecraft history, only John Young can be argued as the most experienced astronaut in terms of number of space flights (6), different spacecraft (4) as well as specific projects (3). He's flown two Gemini missions, flew Apollo 10 as Command Module pilot, flew Apollo 16 as Lunar Module commanding pilot, and flew Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia on its maiden flight and on STS-6. Jim Lovell has a similar history (having flown in Gemini and Apollo twice), but because of the events of Apollo 13, never walked on the moon, and retired before the Space Shuttle project. The only thing Young hasn't done was Mercury.

Some of you may remember Schirra's commercials on Actifed in the 1970s (which he had to use on Apollo 7 when the astronauts caught a sniffle). I think that was one of the very few astronaut commercials (Sally Ride and Buzz Aldrin have done some, I believe).