Former Astronaut Wally Schirra Dies

[stevedeshazer]

Source: ABC News

Astronaut Walter M. "Wally" Schirra Jr., one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts and the only man to fly on all three of NASA's early space missions, has died at the age of 84, a NASA official confirmed Thursday.

Schirra, who commanded the first rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit, died of natural causes, according to NASA.

"We have spoken with his family and we can confirm he did die of natural causes. We hope to have a statement later today," Dave Stieitz, a NASA spokesman in Houston, told The Associated Press.



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3135903

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:(

[swag]

1. Thanks for the post.

[SledDriver]

2. Who does that leave from the original Mercury 7?

Just Glenn and Carpenter?

[Bucky]

7. Yep. Here they are in a casual moment (big picture warning)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. I am now going to say something completely idiotic.

The third one from the right is the one who looks more like Ed Harris, so is he John Glenn?

[OzarkDem]

26. Yes

It was good casting, no?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

32. Well, fuck me sideways with a stuffed three-legged gay albino platypus!

:wow:

[Botany]

3. Happy Trails to you Wally

Original seven Astronauts portrait (Back row, L-R: Shepard, Grissom, Cooper; Front row, L-R: Schirra,
Slayton, Glenn, Carpenter). Note that Slayton and Glenn are wearing work boots that were spray-painted.

[Deep13]

13. Looks like they all shopped at the same store.

:evilgrin:

[Bucky]

4. The Mercury Seven were incredibly brave men

We're nearing an age when we take people leave the atmosphere for granted. But in the early 60s orbiting the Earth was more audacious than even the Moon shot. It's good to know we can make heroes out of science and engineering, and not just out of wars and disasters.

[daleo]

27. With two space shuttle disasters?

If people take leaving the atmosphere for granted, then they don't have much of a grasp of probability. What's there been, maybe 100 shuttle launches? Two disasters and a dozen dead is pretty substantial.

Which isn't to say Mercury and Apollo didn't take a lot of courage.

[El Supremo]

5. Oh no!

He was one of my favorites. After he refused to put on his helmet during the reentry of Apollo 7 they never let him fly again. He had a big head cold and went on to sell some cold remedy on TV.

That leaves only Glenn and Carpenter left.

[Deep13]

14. He announced his retirement before Apollo 7 flew.

NASA took out their need for discipline on the two other crew members of that flight, Cunningham and Eisle.

[RobinA]

6. Jeez...

This doesn't make me feel TOO old!

It always amazes me that my age doesn't make me realize how old I am getting, but OTHER people's ages do.

[colorado_ufo]

8. Blue skies, Wally

[AnneD]

9. I was so lucky to have lived...

in Houston during those day hey days of Mercury and Apollo. I love the book Right Stuff. They were quite a group of trail blazers, all of them.

[ramapo]

10. Fond memories

I was in the second grade, home from school and sick with chickenpox, for his Mercury flight. I listened to it on the radio because I wasn't allowed to watch TV as it was supposedly bad for your eyes when you had the pox.

I can still remember the day, a fine time back when the United States had a real manned space program.

[Deep13]

11. And then there were two.

Gus Grissom d. 1968 Apollo One fire (Liberty Bell 7, Gemini 3)
Deke Slayton d. 1993 brain cancer (Apollo-Suyuz)
Alan Shepard d. 1998 of luekemia (Freedom 7, Apollo 14)
Gordon Cooper d. 2004 (Faith 7, Gemini 5)

Still surviving are Scott Carpenter (Aurora 7) and John Glenn, the eldest of the bunch (Friendship 7, space shuttle)

Walter "Wally" Schirra was known both for his mischievious sense of humor and his exacting flying skills. In his Mercury flight, Sigma 7, Schirra demonstrated that it was possible to manage spacecraft resources on a long flight. The previous attempt, Carpenter's Aurora 7 resulted in running out of fuel during the flight, an uncontrolled reentry and missing the landing target by several miles. Schirra managed to restore NASA's credibility following Carpenter and the loss of the capsule on Grissom's flight. Following the Apollo One fire, Schirra commanded Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo flight and demonstrated that the Apollo spacecraft could function in space. His irritation with head cold on that flight prompted him to advertise a cold remedy on television asking if we can imagine sneezing into a clear, bubble helmet.

Perhaps Schirra's most significant contribution to space flight was the problematic Gemini 6A flight. The purpose of G.6 was to rendezvous and dock with a target drone and use the drone's engines to manuever the docked vehicles. The drone exploded at launch, so it was decided to launch G.6 late so that it could rendezvous with the long duration mission of G.7. The challenge was using the single Titan launch facility for both flights. Well, they got G.6 on the pad after quickly refitting it after the G.7 launch.

After countdown, G.6's engines fired and abruptly stopped. The proper procedure was for Schirra to cause both astronauts to eject in case the Titan missle they were on exploded. That would mean that the hatches would be blown off by explosive bolts and the ejection seats would shoot out horizontally on rockets. Hopefully, they could get enough lift to deploy parachutes, but in all likelihood the two men would be seriously injured by the ejection. The capsule and the mission would be ruined. Schirra quickly noted that they had not moved after the ignition and he decided to risk explosion and did not eject. After removing the rocket from the pad, technicians found two problems. One was a defective diode and the other was a dust-proof cap on one of the propellant supply lines. One of those problems, I think the fuel blockage, caused the shut-down allowing techs. to find the other problem which would have been fatal to the mission had it not been detected. You will not find this in any books. I know because a friend of mine was the head Air Force engineer on that mission.

Schirra and Tom Stafford launched on what was now called G.6A for the first ever rendezvous in space. Rendezvous is an extremely difficult to do in space especially on limited fuel reserves. Orbital dynamics do not work anything like close flying in airplanes. Schirra closed the distance until the two ships were inches apart. The Apollo project depended on rendezvous to recover landers from the lunar surface. Without this procedure being demonstrated in Gemini, the Apollo program would have been scrapped.

A fond goodbye to a delightful man with nerves of steel.

[maddogesq]

28. Ironic, isn't it?

In the book and movie "The Right Stuff," Glenn and Carpenter were the clean guy types always in that competition thing.

I quote from the movie all the time. The film was panned by many, but I loved it as much as the book.

"Gus? An astronaut named Gus?"

By the way, my living father (vet of the Battle of the Bulge) is named Wally.

[Parche]

12. RIP Wally

[Vinca]

15. He was a bona fide American hero. A sad passing. nt

[cosmicdot]

16. he signed a cast on my hand

after an event honoring the 7 astronauts in Hampton, VA -- the astronauts were originally based at Langley AFB in Hampton, where an uncle was an engineer on the Mercury project's launch pad


farewell to a great American

edited to add http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Schirra

[Vidar]

17. A sad reminder of days when we actually had heroes. RIP Wally.

[edbermac]

18. Just look at this contrast: The Right Stuff and The Wrong Stuff

A hero and a zero.

RIP Mr Schirra. :patriot:

[Bake]

24. PERFECT!

Hero and a zero!

:rofl:

Bake

[xxqqqzme]

19. The news reporter on KTLK just

pronounced his name as 'shear-a' Guess she was born after all the Apollo fanfare. She makes me feel old because I remember how to pronounce the name.

[El Supremo]

20. I bet she also said Gemineye instead of Geminee. n/m

[kskiska]

33. So did the CNN bimbo

I heard Shepard Smith pronounced it SIR-a. You'd think they'd at least look it up, even if they hadn't been born when Schirra was in space.

[drm604]

22. I grew up during Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up, as did a lot of my peers. We hero-worshiped these guys. Of course a lot of that was due to government propaganda, but they deserved the praise even so. They were putting their lives on the line to help us to push out into the new frontier.

Something went wrong with that dream. I don't know what exactly. Maybe it just collided with reality. Maybe the dream that was presented to us was really just a smokescreen for the reality - cold war competition with the Soviets.

Even so, I think it was a worthwhile dream. Even if it isn't anywhere near as straightforward as it seemed to the little boy that I was, it's still worth pursuing in some fashion beyond the current token efforts.

Rest in peace, Wally. You were a hero.

[AngryAmish]

23. Why did Bushco want him dead?

[cureautismnow]

25. Godspeed, Wally.

You were a true, inspirational American hero. :patriot:

[Wilms]

29. .

[Book Lover]

30. May the wind be at your back

:patriot:

[ovidsen]

31. The "irrelevance" of the Mercury 7 astronauts

I cringed every time I heard the talking heads on Atlanta area broadcast outlets who mis-pronounced Wally's name when reporting is death.

It's shirr-AH. Not SHIR-ra.

Of course, most of these talking heads weren't even born before the first Moon landing in 1969. But their producers (who tend to be older and, therefore, less telegenic so they're never on camera)) did nothing to correct this faux pas. The anchors have an excuse. Ignorance. Mercury 7 astronaut's names probably sound more like the name of some alt-rock band than the names of the heroes who went where no American had ever gone before. The producers have none. You might think I'm being picky, but mangling the name of a man who was a household word 40 years ago is just inexcusable.

Hats off to the Mercury 7. True American heroes.