Editorial: Astronaut Wally Schirra, 1923-2007

Saturday, May 5, 2007 | 7 a.m.

It would be hard to imagine a more exciting time in American history, especially for schoolchildren, than the late 1950s. It was a time of spacemen, and not the kind featured in the sci-fi movies. Real spacemen. Like Wally Schirra.

Pulling the country together was a common question: Who would become the country's first astronauts? When the names of the seven military pilots chosen for Project Mercury were announced, they instantly became national heroes.

Here's how Life magazine, for a September 1959 cover story on their "epochal mission," described them: "They are the best of a very good lot, a bright, balanced, splendidly conditioned first team, willing - eager, in fact - to undertake an assignment most men would find unthinkable."

Schirra, a Navy pilot who had flown 90 combat missions during the Korean War, joined Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Donald Slayton and Alan Shepard on that cover of Life.

On a 1962 Mercury mission, Schirra became the third American to orbit the Earth, for a then-astonishing six times. In 1965 he commanded Gemini 6 and his rendezvous in space with Gemini 7 became a milestone in space history. Historians say his last flight, aboard Apollo 7 in 1968, restored America's confidence in the space program, which had been shaken the year before when three astronauts, including Grissom, died in a fire moments before a scheduled launch.

Schirra died of a heart attack Thursday at a hospital in La Jolla, Calif. He was 84.

Space travel today is taken for granted. But there was a time when the country held its breath as seven astronauts took turns waiting in their capsules for blast-off, uncertain of their own fates but certain they were helping the country enter a new age.