Walter Schirra

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Walter Schirra
Walter Schirra
Country: United StatesUnited States United States
Organization: National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationNASA NASA
selected on April 2, 1959
(1st NASA Group)
Calls: 3 space flights
Start of the
first space flight:
3rd October 1962
Landing of the
last space flight:
October 22, 1968
Time in space: 12d 7h 12min
retired on July 1969
Space flights

Walter Marty "Wally" Schirra Jr. (born March 12, 1923 in Hackensack , New Jersey , † May 3, 2007 in La Jolla , California ) was an American astronaut . He was the only one actively involved as a spaceman in each of the first three US space programs - Mercury , Gemini, and Apollo .

Early years

Schirra was a descendant of immigrants from Loco TI in the Swiss canton of Ticino ( Onsernone Valley ). He studied aeronautical engineering at Newark College of Engineering from 1940 to 1942 and then went to the United States Naval Academy , where he received his diploma in June 1945. He served aboard the USS Alaska during the final weeks of World War II , but the war ended before the ship reached the combat zones.

From 1948 he was a fighter pilot in the US Navy and also flew missions in the Korean War . From 1952 to 1954 he was a test pilot in China Lake, California , where he also participated in the development of air-to-air missiles . Further stations in his career were the aircraft carrier USS Lexington and training in California and Maryland .

Mercury

Walter Schirra was one of 110 test pilots who were shortlisted for the first astronaut group of the Mercury program . On April 9, 1959, he was presented to the public by NASA as one of the first seven American astronauts. As a specialty, he took over the life support systems on board the Mercury spaceship and the space suit . For the second flight of a Mercury spaceship in earth orbit, Mercury-Atlas 7 , Schirra was assigned as a substitute pilot. When the originally nominated pilot Deke Slayton was denied the ability to fly , it was not Schirra, but Scott Carpenter who came into play.

Schirra then had his first space mission with Mercury-Atlas 8 when he steered the Sigma 7 spacecraft six times around the earth on October 3, 1962 . This flight went down in NASA history as a "textbook space flight". Schirra was thus the ninth person in space, the fifth being American.

Gemini

From January 1963 Schirra took over new tasks at NASA in the coordination of Gemini and Apollo activities .

From April 1964 he was preparing for the first American two-man flight Gemini 3 , for which he was assigned as a substitute commander. After this flight was successfully carried out by Virgil Grissom and John Young on March 23, 1965 , he was given command of the next available flight: Gemini 6 .

This flight should have been the first coupling of two space planes in orbit, but the mission plan had to be changed after a false start of the target satellite and instead provided for a rendezvous with Gemini 7 .

Walter Schirra showed iron nerves when he did not trigger the ejection seats during an unsuccessful start attempt by Gemini 6 , although the displays indicated to him that the rocket had already taken off and was threatened with falling back onto the launch pad - with devastating consequences. Schirra did not rely on the instruments, however, but on the fact that he had not felt any signs of acceleration. This assessment turned out to be correct: in fact, the rocket had not yet lifted off.

The third attempt put Gemini 6 with him and Tom Stafford into orbit on December 15, 1965, where, for the first time in the history of space travel, they performed controlled approaches of two spaceships.

Apollo

Walter M. Schirra Jr. (1968)

After the successful Gemini 6 mission, Schirra switched to the Apollo program , where he was nominated on September 29, 1966 as the commander of the second manned flight. He was assigned to Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham . In November 1966 that flight was canceled and the three astronauts became the reserve crew for the first manned Apollo flight, Apollo 1 . In a test on January 27, 1967, however, all three members of the main team were killed, and all team assignments were temporarily obsolete. On May 9, 1967, Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham were announced as the crew for the first manned Apollo flight. This mission was now called Apollo 7 .

Apollo 7 launched on October 11, 1968 and remained in orbit for eleven days. From a technical point of view, this flight went extremely well, a rendezvous was carried out with the upper stage of the Saturn 1B rocket and the first television images were sent to Earth from an American spaceship. The astronauts had a cold, however, and there was a rather irritable atmosphere between the flight control center and the spaceship. The situation escalated when the crew wanted to refuse to wear the helmets in order to re-enter the earth's atmosphere, which the flight control center strictly refused for safety reasons. Wearing the helmet during re-entry would have prevented the crew from manually equalizing the pressure in the ear canals by holding their nose closed while exhaling. However, the astronauts feared that as a result they would have suffered from great pain up to the rupture of the eardrum, so that Schirra, as the flight commander, ignored the instructions from the flight control center and the crew carried out the re-entry into the earth's atmosphere without helmets. These tensions meant that Schirra and his teammates were no longer used in any further space flights. However, Schirra had already announced his departure before the flight.

According to NASA

Schirra had already announced that Apollo 7 would be his last space flight and left NASA on July 1, 1969. He worked as a board member and managing director in several companies until he founded his own company Schirra Enterprises in 1979 . He has also served on the board of directors of several companies and made television commercials for Actifed , the drug he took on the Apollo 7 flight. Walter Schirra was married and had two children.

Schirra died at the age of 84 years from the effects of cancer in Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla ( California ). His widow died in April 2015.

On October 13, 2000 the asteroid (8722) Schirra was named after him.

A supply and ammunition transporter of the Lewis and Clark class , the USNS Wally Schirra (T-AKE-8) launched in 2009 , was also named after him .

Special features and records

  • first human with three space flights (including Apollo 7 )
  • first person to pilot three spaceships ( Mercury program , Gemini program and Apollo program )
  • first person to command three missions
  • Maiden flier of the Apollo program
  • first person to play a musical instrument in space (Jingle Bells on a harmonica, 1965)
  • first live television broadcast from space

Trivia

Schirra was known among his colleagues in the astronaut corps for playing funny pranks on them. The astronaut Eugene Cernan therefore called him "the ultimate prankster" in his autobiography "The Last Man on the Moon " .

Web links

Commons : Walter Schirra  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. USNS WALLY SCHIRRA (T-AKE 8) in the Naval Vessel Register
  2. Navy To Christen USNS Wally Schirra on the US Navy website