Wally Schirra: Mercury, Gemini & Apollo Astronaut

Wally Schirra: Mercury, Gemini & Apollo Astronaut

Wally Schirra: Mercury, Gemini & Apollo Astronaut





		Walter "Wally" Schirra was the only one of his fellow astronauts in three NASA programs: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Named one of NASA's "Original Seven" astronauts in 1959, he was an astronaut long enough to fly the first crewed mission of Apollo's command module that eventually transported crews to and from the moon. He also sat through an aborted pad during the Gemini program.


				Schirra, an aeronautical engineer by training, obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from the US Naval Academy. UU In 1945. He was supposed to join a World War II mission aboard the armored battle cruiser of Alaska, but the war ended when the ship arrived in Japan, According to a biography of NASA.of Schirra. 

				Schirra saw combat action in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, during which he performed 90 combat missions. He later became a test pilot at the Naval Artillery Training Station in California and also attended the Air Test Center on the Patuxent River, Maryland, among other functions.

				During the selection process for the NASA astronaut program, doctors found an abnormal growth in Schirra's larynx and immediately opted to eliminate it. According to the biography of Schirra of NASA, the doctors decided to give the possible astronaut what should have been a treatment of two to three months in just two or three days to accelerate the process. This was Schirra's first indication that NASA wanted him to be one of the agency's first seven astronauts.



				Sigma 7 'micromouse farts'

				In 1959, Schirra was selected to join the first group of NASA astronauts, known as the Mercury Seven. The mercury programIt was NASA's inaugural human space flight program.

				Each astronaut in the Mercury program was assigned a specific responsibility to help develop the system that would be used in space. Schirra's task was to examine the life support systems of the ship and test the space suits, according to NASA.

				When Deke Slayton, a veteran World War II pilot and member of Mercury Seven, was taken off the Mercury-Atlas 7 flight due to a heart condition, Schirra thought he would be assigned instead, as it was Slayton's backing. But NASA selected Scott Carpenter, a member of Mercury Seven. The choice of the agency annoyed Schirra, especially since he remained in the reserve position for Carpenter.

				"I do not think anyone knew how angry I was," wrote Schirra in his autobiography, "The space of schirra"(Naval Institute Press, 2000).

				However, Schirra was assigned the next flight, the fifth Mercury mission, called Mercury-Atlas 8. As indicated in his autobiography, Schirra decided to name the spacecraft in which he flew Sigma 7, which he said symbolizes excellence in engineering. (Sigma is a Greek symbol that represents the sum of an equation).

				Prior to the mission, Schirra asked the program officers to allow him to deactivate the automatic attitude controls during the flight to save fuel, which allows the ship to make more orbits of the Earth and lengthen the flight.

				Schirra was launched on October 3, 1962 and received the approval for six orbits, which was a record at that time. He attributed his success to his careful use of fuel.

				"I fired my propellers with moderation, in small bursts that I like to call bits with microphones," wrote Schirra in his autobiography. "At the end of my flight, I had more than half of my fuel left and I had to download it."





						


Walter Wally Schirra poses in his Mercury pressure suit with a model of the Mercury spacecraft behind him.

            						    Credit: NASA 




				'I had my ass working for me'

				After the Mercury program, Schirra continued working for NASA, this time with the Gemini Project. The Gemini program was designed to send more astronauts into space for long periods of time in preparation to send future manned missions to the moon.

				Schirra was selected as pilot of command for the Gemini 6 spacecraft. The objective of the mission was to perform the first encounter and coupling of two spacecraft, a maneuver that would be necessary for future missions to the moon.

				It was assumed that Schirra and his fellow pilot, Thomas Stafford, would dock with the unmanned spacecraft Agena, which had been launched three months earlier, but exploded before entering orbit.

				Then, instead, NASA decided to launch Gemini 7 on December 4, 1965, as the new target of Schirra and Stafford in the mission that NASA changed its name to Gemini 6-A. Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, the astronauts aboard Gemini 7, arrived in orbit and waited for the arrival of Schirra and Stafford.

				However, when turning on Gemini 6-A on December 12, the Titan II rocket that was going to launch the spacecraft went off only 2 seconds after the start-up. Schirra and Stafford had the option of expelling, but Schirra decided not to do so.

				"I had my ass working for me, I knew we had not taken off, so I did not start the ejection sequence," Schirra wrote. The launch was reprogrammed and successfully completed three days later, and the two Gemini spacecraft successfully met in space.

				Next, Schirra was selected to command Apollo 7, which ended up being the first manned mission after the fatal platform fire claimed by the crew of Apollo 1.



				The crew of Apollo 7.

				Apollo 7 took off on October 11, 1968. The veteran astronaut struggled to keep the crew's tasks to perfection to ensure the success of the mission, but things got derailed after Schirra caught a cold and reportedly , he passed it on to his crewmates Walter Cunningham and Donn. Eisele.

				The mission controllers complained about the astute members of the Apollo 7 crew who also rejected a planned television broadcast. The last straw came when the astronauts refused to wear the helmets of their suit during the re-entry due to concerns that the change in altitude could damage their eardrums.

				"He was insubordinate ... This team should not fly again," wrote former flight director Chris Kraft in his memoirs.Flight: my life in control of the mission"(Dutton, 2001).

				In his own autobiography, Schirra responded that the ground crew overlooked "intangible things," but gave no further details of what they were.

				After leaving NASA, Schirra undertook numerous commercial ventures in banking, aviation, oil, advertising and other industries. Schirra died in May 2007 of a heart attack.

		Although Schirra's death was many years ago, his website (www.wallyschirra.com) is still active. His webmaster, Tracy, wrote this shortly after Schirra's death: "Wally left me with one last 'gotcha.' A few minutes after the public announcement of his death, the server hosting this website suffered a complete collapse due to Wally could never really understand why people loved visiting this site, and this was his last laugh at my expense.Thank you, Wally We received over a million visits to this site in the first 36 hours. Remember our "agreement" in one dollar a blow, where should I send my invoice? Gotcha!
		In the days after Schirra's death, his family requested that those who wanted to remember Schirra be able to make donations to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, the San Diego Air and Space Museum and the Pilot Scholarship Foundation for Experimental Testing. the society.
		The 50th anniversary of Apollo 7 was on October 11, 2018. NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum hope to hold a series of events related to the 50th anniversary of Apollo's key missions, including the first landing (Apollo 11), occurred on July 20, 1969.
		Meanwhile, NASA is considering sending humans to the moon in the next decade, following a Trump administration directive at the end of 2017. The agency is designing a lunar orbital link platform (lunar space station) and can also land humans on the surface.
		Coincidentally, the USS Wally Schirra, a cargo ship of the US Navy. UU., He participated in the rescue of a dozen Filipino fishermen in the Indian Ocean a few days before the 50th anniversary of Apollo 7. (Apollo 7 landed on the water and was also picked up by a Navy ship, the USS Essex.) The ship was officially opened about two years after Schirra's death in 2009, according to the Schirra website.

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