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Wally Schirra Dead at 84

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the rare-breed-of-heroes dept.

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."

5 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wally Shirra was an Old School Astronaught bada by ubrgeek · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually, he probably was in his younger days. Had the honor of meeting him once when I was a reporter. This was around 10 years ago and you wouldn't believe the number of women flocking around him to hear his stories ...

    --
    Bark less. Wag more.
  2. In the future by SAN1701 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Altough he didn't walked in the moon in his Apollo mission, his death made me think if there will be a time when, as before, no living person had actually went to some other world. With no moon mission schedulled by any nation capable of it, and the ageing of Apollo astronauts (it's almost 4 decades since the landings after all), it seems possible that in some point in the future we will have no moon walkers among us.

    Kind of sad. Reminds me that, for some decades, civilians (rich civilians, of course), could cross the north atlantic in less than for hours, and now, well, only the military can do it that fast.

  3. Re:From a different time by gvc · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Let's not get too nostalgic. The whole point of the space race was as a proxy for the Americans and Soviets to one-up each other in their nuclear delivery capacity. The cold war gave us NASA and microelectronics while WWII gave us the Manhattan project and computers. War, not any sort of benign application of human ingenuity and effort.


    Once Apollo 11 landed on the moon, interest in the space program quickly faded. Even Apollo 13 rekindled it only for the duration of the mission. While spinoff benefits of the program were manifold, these were unintentional. It was a publicity stunt, plain and simple.

  4. "Kind of sad" is putting it mildly... by alispguru · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The year 2009 will be the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing.

    It will also be the 37th anniversary of the last moon landing.

    Dammit.

    If everything goes according to current NASA plans, they'll be back in 2019.

    2019!

    --

    To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
  5. It might not happen... by yeremein · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The youngest moon walker (Harrison Shmitt; Apollo 17) will be 84 in 2019. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin will be 89. There's a good chance at least one Apollo moon walker will survive to see mankind return to the moon.