Wally Schirra

Flying was the family business before it was his: his father piloted bombers for the Royal Canadian Air Force in the First World War, and his mother did wing-walking stunts at county fairs. Schirra graduated high school in 1940, studied engineering, then finished the Naval Academy's wartime three-year course in 1945 and shipped out aboard USS Alaska before the war ended. He earned his wings at Pensacola in 1948, then flew 90 combat missions over Korea and downed two MiG-15s. In 1958 he graduated the Naval Test Pilot School alongside two men, Jim Lovell and Pete Conrad, who would matter to the rest of his career, and in April 1959 NASA picked him as one of the original seven Mercury astronauts.

He flew three times and is the only person to fly Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Sigma 7 orbited six times in October 1962. Gemini VI A, in December 1965, brought his capsule within a foot of Gemini VII in the first space rendezvous, after Schirra calmly declined to eject when the launch engines shut down on the pad. Apollo 7, in October 1968, was the first crewed flight after the Apollo 1 fire killed the crew Schirra's had backed up; sick with a head cold, Schirra overruled Mission Control and flew reentry without helmets, a standoff that became the mission's defining story alongside its success. He retired from NASA and the Navy in July 1969.

The Apollo 7 head cold that made Schirra famous also nearly ended his career on bad terms. Ground controllers wanted the helmets on for reentry; Schirra, backed by his crew, refused, arguing his stuffed sinuses could rupture an eardrum on descent — a technical judgment that read to NASA management as insubordination from a commander on his last flight before retirement. None of the three Apollo 7 astronauts flew again. Schirra got the last laugh commercially: Actifed, a decongestant NASA had carried on the mission, hired him years later as a paid spokesman, trading on the very cold that had made him difficult. He turned the friction into a punchline for the rest of his life, on television with Walter Cronkite covering seven more Moon missions as a paid analyst.

Schirra spent his NASA afterlife on camera, co-anchoring CBS's Moon-landing coverage with Cronkite through Apollo 11 and the near-disaster of Apollo 13, then sat on corporate boards including Kimberly-Clark and Johns-Manville. He died May 3, 2007, in San Diego, age 84, of a heart attack during cancer treatment; the Navy committed his ashes to sea the following February. A cargo ship, the USNS Wally Schirra, was christened for him in 2009. Actors have played him twice on screen, in The Right Stuff and From the Earth to the Moon, both times as the wisecracking one — the reputation he built smuggling a harmonica aboard Gemini VI A to fake a UFO report never really left him.

Wally Schirra's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Mercury-Atlas 8 (Sigma 7) mission
  Six orbits, nine hours; his first spaceflight 1962
• Gemini VI A mission
  Commanded the first space rendezvous, station-keeping within a foot of Gemini VII 1965
• Apollo 7 mission
  First crewed Apollo flight, and his third and last spaceflight 1968
• Schirra's Space book
  His autobiography 1988

• 1945 aged ~22 Graduates the U.S. Naval Academy and ships aboard USS Alaska
• 1948 aged ~25 Earns his naval aviator wings at Pensacola
• 1950 aged ~27 Flies 90 combat missions in Korea and downs two MiG-15s
• April 1959 aged 36 Selected as one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts
• October 3, 1962 aged 39 Flies Sigma 7, his first spaceflight
• December 15, 1965 aged 42 Commands Gemini VI A in the first space rendezvous
• October 1968 aged 45 Commands Apollo 7 and flies reentry without helmets over Mission Control's objections
• July 1, 1969 aged 46 Retires from NASA and the Navy as a captain
• May 3, 2007 aged 84 Dies in San Diego, age 84

• John Glenn 1921–2016
  First American to orbit Earth and later the oldest person to fly in space at age 77. fellow Mercury Seven astronaut
• Gus Grissom 1926–1967
  One of the original Mercury Seven astronauts who died in the Apollo 1 fire. crew he backed up before the Apollo 1 fire
• Walter Cronkite 1916–2009
  CBS Evening News anchor known as the most trusted man in America during a pivotal era of broadcast journalism. co-anchored Moon coverage with him
• Alan Shepard 1923–1998
  First American in space and fifth person to walk on the Moon during Apollo 14. fellow Mercury Seven astronaut
• Deke Slayton 1924–1993
  One of the original Mercury Seven who later directed astronaut selection and flew on the Apollo-Soyuz mission. fellow Mercury Seven astronaut