Former Apollo astronaut
Walter "Walt" Cunningham
Sunday, September 28, 1997
Walt Cunningham is perhaps best known as America's second civilian astronaut.
On October 11, 1968, he occupied the lunar module pilot seat for the eleven-day flight of Apollo 7 -- the first manned flight test of the third generation United States spacecraft. With Walter M. Schirra, Jr., and Donn F. Eisele, Cunningham participated in and executed maneuvers enabling the crew to perform exercises in transposition and docking and lunar orbit rendezvous with the S-IVB stage of their Saturn IB launch vehicle; completed eight successful test and maneuvering ignitions of the service module propulsion engine; measured the accuracy of performance of all spacecraft systems; and provided the first effective television transmission of onboard crew activities.
The 263-hour, four-and-a-half million mile shakedown flight was successfully concluded on October 22, 1968, with splashdown occurring in the Atlantic -- some eight miles from the carrier ESSEX (only 3/10 of a mile from the originally predicted aiming point).
Mr. Cunningham's last assignment at the Johnson Space Center was as Chief of the Skylab Branch of the Fight Crew Directorate. In this capacity he was responsible for the operational inputs for five major pieces of manned space hardware, two different boosters and 65 major on-board experiments that comprised the Skylab program. The Skylab program also utilized the first manned systems employing arrays for electrical power, molecular sieves for environmental control systems, and inertia storage devices for attitude control systems.
You can read a transcript of our chat with this consummate astronaut here.
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