Astronaut Wally Schirra Dies at 84, in Hospital

Wally Schirra, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts died in hospital in La Jolla. Wally Schirra was the fifth American in space and the third American to orbit the earth. He died in 84.

Wally Schirra flied with NASA's three human-space programs, took part in the first rendezvous between two spacecraft. In October 1968 Mr. Schirra commanded Apollo 7, which was the first mission to take pilots to the Moon.

In October 1962 Wally Schirra he was a test pilot in Sigma 7 Mercury craft. "Mostly it's lousy out there," he told the Associated Press in 1981. "It's a hostile environment, and it's trying to kill you. The outside temperature goes from a minus-450 degrees to a plus-300 degrees. You sit in a flying Thermos bottle." He spent more than 295 hours in space.

Wally Schirra graduated from U.S. Naval Academy in 1945 and became a naval aviator after three years, but he was seriously interested in space since he was 13 years old. Being a naval aviator he participated in 90 missions during Korean War.

In an interview he said: "My goal is to be a hot-shot test pilot, not just a scarf-and-goggles type, but one who could use his engineering confidence to work on systems and make the best airplane, ever."

"I didn't really volunteer for Project Mercury," he added, "but became a candidate after being ordered to Washington to hear a presentation. We were listening to a pair of engineers and a psychologist describing the feeling when you're on top of a rocket in a capsule and going around the world," he remembered. "I was immediately looking for the door, and they said, 'Not to worry, we'll send a chimpanzee first!' There's no way a test pilot would volunteer for something like that."

On April 9, 1959 Wally Schirra was named Mercury astronaut, together with Glenn, Carpenter, Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom, Gordon Cooper, Donald Slayton.

On October 3, 1962 Wally Schirra piloted Sigma 7 Mercury on a nine hour six-orbit mission.

Wally Schirra Also worked on developing the Gemini program, which resulted in Gemini 6 craft launching on December 12, 1965, but suddenly shut down. Wally Schirra had a choice to eject the craft, but he remained with the other astronauts and solved the technical problem.

By Ruzan Harutyunyan for HULIQ

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