Wally Schirra
Wally Schirra
Walter Marty "Wally" Schirra, Jr.,, was an American naval officer and aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, and one of the original seven astronauts chosen for Project Mercury, United States first effort to put humans in space. He flew the six-orbit, nine-hour Mercury-Atlas 8 mission on October 3, 1962, becoming the fifth American, and the ninth human, to ride a rocket into space. In the two-man Gemini program, he achieved the first space rendezvous, station-keeping his Gemini 6A spacecraft within 1...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth12 March 1923
CityHackensack, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
At the end of our NASA careers, no one had a place for us in the military.
I saw the booster, not Sputnik, flying by, and I said, maybe this is the way we should be going, not just sitting back waiting for something to happen.
Within NASA, there were lots of things that were not appropriate to bring out to the public, because the press did not handle it well.
Kennedy had made a mess in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He had to do something to look good. The Apollo program of going to the Moon was quite a goal,
I don't think the space station will ever do anything for exploration. Putting people up there for a year or more is the only way you will get anywhere near the exploration concept
A little levity is appropriate in a dangerous trade.
Levity is the lubricant of a crisis. We resort to jokes, pranks and good natured kidding to relieve tension, stress and boredom.
I don't go along with going to Moon first to build a launch pad to go to Mars. We should go to Mars from Earth orbit. We have already been to the Moon; we've already practiced.
I was told having a website would help me. I have yet to figure out why my life story needs to be on the web.
Some of the wives didn't keep up with the program. It started breaking apart during the Apollo days.
John Glenn craved the publicity. I think even John would admit that. When he went into politics, that became pretty obvious! He knew how to do public relations.
When a test pilot comes off a flight, there is typically another pilot who is going to take it up, and he believes in the debriefing. You don't keep something to yourself