Anther Hero is Gone

[Iceaxe]

Pioneer astronaut Wally Schirra dies at 84
He was the only man to fly in Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spaceships

SAN DIEGO - Walter M. Schirra Jr., one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts and the only man to fly on NASA's Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, died Thursday. He was 84.

Schirra died of a heart attack at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, said Ruth Chandler Varonfakis, a family friend and spokeswoman for the San Diego Aerospace Museum. NASA had said he died late Wednesday but the family and the medical examiner's office both said it was Thursday.

An aviation buff since childhood, known to fellow astronauts for his colorful personality and independent streak, Schirra became the third American to orbit the Earth in October 1962. He encircled the globe six times in a flight that lasted more than nine hours.

He returned to space three years later as commander of Gemini 6 and guided his two-man capsule toward Gemini 7, already in orbit. On Dec. 15, 1965, the two ships came within a few feet of each other as they shot through space, some 185 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth. It was the first rendezvous of two spacecraft in orbit.

His third and final spaceflight in 1968 inaugurated the Apollo program that sought to land a man on the moon.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin paid tribute to Schirra in a statement issued from the agency's Washington headquarters: "With the passing of Wally Schirra, we at NASA note with sorrow the loss of yet another of the pioneers of human spaceflight."

Beginnings of the Right Stuff

The former Navy test pilot said he initially had little interest when he heard of NASA's Mercury program. But he grew more intrigued over time, and the space agency named him one of the Mercury Seven in April 1959.

Supremely confident, he sailed through rigorous astronaut training with what one reporter called "the ease of preparing for a family picnic."

He became the fifth American in space when he blasted off from Cape Canaveral on Oct. 3, 1962, aboard the Sigma 7 Mercury spacecraft. The first two American astronauts