Godspeed, Wally Schirra

[AustinBoston]

I've been on the road for business, and just picked up today that Walter M. "Wally" Schirra Jr. passed away on (Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on who you believe).  He was 84.

Wally flew on Sigma 7, the 5th manned Mercury spaceflight, spending 9 hours in orbit.  I was not able to find documentation on this, but I think he was the first American to eat in space.

Wally first flew at the age of 15.  His father had been a WW I pilot and a barnstormer, and his mother a "wing walker".

While in the Navy, he became only the second Naval pilot to log over 1,000 hours in jet powered aircraft.  He flew 90 combat missions during the Korean war (on loan to the Air Force).

In additon to his Mercury flight, he flew on Gemini 6A, which rendezvoused with Gemini 7, the first time two manned spacecraft met up in orbit.

He later flew on the first manned Apollo flight, Apollo 7.  This made him the only person to fly on Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft, and the first to fly in space three times.

He resigned from NASA and the Navy in 1969, and among many other business and civic activites became a consultant for CBS, working closely with Walter Chronkite to cover the later Apollo missions to the moon.

Among many other awards (see the links below for lists), he received an Emmy for transmitting the first significant live pictures from an orbiting spacecraft.

With his passing, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter are the only Mercury 7 astronauts still with us.  Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom died in a pre-launch fire on Apollo 1 in 1967.  Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, the only one of the Mercury 7 to not fly in a Mercury spacecraft (he flew in the joint Apollo-Soyouz mission in 1975), died in 1993.  Alan B. Shepard Jr., America's first man in space, died in 1998.  L. Gordon Cooper died in 2004, and now Wally Schirra.

Walter M. "Wally" Schirra Jr.
March, 1923 - May, 2007

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Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Schirra (says May 3rd)
NASA Bio: http://www11.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/schirra-wm.html (says May 2nd)
Official site: http://www.wallyschirra.com/ (gives no day that I could find)

Austin