Walter Cunningham, last surviving Apollo 7 astronaut, dies at age 90

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 He was 90 years outdated.

The final surviving member of the first crewed Apollo flight, Apollo 7, Ronnie Walter “Walt” Cunningham may very well be seen as an outsider in comparison with most different astronauts of his time: He was first a fighter pilot, not a check 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 up to now.

“Walt and his crewmates made historical past [during Apollo 7], paving the way in which for the Artemis Era we see right this moment,” mentioned NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson in a statement. “NASA will all the time bear in mind his contributions to our nation’s space program and sends our condolences to the Cunningham household.”

How Walter Cunningham turned an astronaut

Born March 16, 1932, in Creston, Iowa, Cunningham grew up in an agricultural neighborhood positioned 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 turn out to be a pilot.

Cunningham later attended highschool in Venice, a neighborhood positioned within the westside of Los Angeles, California. After graduating, as his classmates had been drafted into responsibility in Korea, Cunningham enlisted within the Navy in 1951.

Initially, and “type of foolishly,” he later recalled in a NASA Oral History, Cunningham aspired to review structure following highschool. However after enlisting, he as a substitute 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 choice to switch. “The Marine Corps assured that, your first tour, you’ll 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 responsibility, 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 schooling,” he later quipped, “I wasn’t going to go very far.” He joined the RAND Company, a nonprofit world 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 area. Then his life took an sudden 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 referred to as Alan Shepard had simply turn out to be America’s first man in space.

Cunningham was hooked.

Cunningham’s path to Apollo 7