Walter Cunningham, a civilian astronaut who helped reignite America’s push to the Moon following the tragic Apollo 1 fire, died on Tuesday (Jan. 3). He was 90 years previous.
The final surviving member of the first crewed Apollo flight, Apollo 7, Ronnie Walter “Walt” Cunningham could possibly be seen as an outsider in comparison with most different astronauts of his time: He was first a fighter pilot, not a take a look at pilot; he was a physicist, not an engineer; and he drove a Porsche, not a Corvette, like most different early NASA astronauts.
However at coronary heart, Cunningham was nonetheless an irreverent adventurer, explorer, and, by his personal unalloyed admission, somebody who stored each eyes centered on the longer term and infrequently dwelt prior to now.
“Walt and his crewmates made historical past [during Apollo 7], paving the way in which for the Artemis Technology we see as we speak,” mentioned NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson in a statement. “NASA will at all times keep in mind his contributions to our nation’s space program and sends our condolences to the Cunningham household.”
How Walter Cunningham grew to become an astronaut
Born March 16, 1932, in Creston, Iowa, Cunningham grew up in an agricultural neighborhood situated on the crest of the railroad linking the Mississippi and Missouri river basins. At age 8, he watched actors Wallace Beery and Clark Gable play naval aviators within the film Hell Divers (1932), kickstarting his need to sometime develop into a pilot.
Cunningham later attended highschool in Venice, a neighborhood situated within the westside of Los Angeles, California. After graduating, as his classmates have been drafted into obligation in Korea, Cunningham enlisted within the Navy in 1951.
Initially, and “sort of foolishly,” he later recalled in a NASA Oral History, Cunningham aspired to check structure following highschool. However after enlisting, he as an alternative accomplished flight coaching, noticed lively Navy service, then transferred to the Marine Corps.
“Within the Navy, you ran the chance of being assigned to torpedo bombers or transport pilots,” he mentioned of his determination to switch. “The Marine Corps assured that, your first tour, you’d be flying single-engine fighter planes.” And though Cunningham by no means confronted any actual aerial fight, the fighter-pilot glamour exerted a strong, irresistible magnetism to him.
By 1961, having resigned lively obligation, married, and now serving as a Marine Corps reservist, Cunningham had earned undergraduate and grasp’s levels in physics from the College of California at Los Angeles. “And not using a school training,” he later quipped, “I wasn’t going to go very far.” He joined the RAND Company, a nonprofit international coverage suppose tank, in California’s San Fernando Valley, spending his time laboring over equations used to information submarine-launched ballistic missiles to their targets. Cunningham additionally started (however didn’t full) a doctorate centered on measuring Earth’s fluctuating magnetic subject. Then his life took an surprising flip.
One morning whereas driving to work, one thing on the radio caught his ear. He pulled his Porsche over to the roadside and listened. Two thousand miles away, in Florida, a naval aviator known as Alan Shepard had simply develop into America’s first man in space.
Cunningham was hooked.
