Walter Cunningham, the last survivor of the first manned Apollo mission, dies

by time news

On October 11, 1968, Walter Cunningham, Wally Schirra y Don Eisele they became the first astronauts to fly in an Apollo spacecraft. In Cunningham’s own words, it was the first of the “five giant steps” that the program had to give to end up stepping on the Moon. The following were Apollo 8, Apollo 9, Apollo 10 and, finally, Apollo 11, with which ten months after that flight the NASA put his signature on history by posing the first men (specifically, Neil Armstrong y Buzz Aldrin) on our satellite. Cunningham, what has died in the early hours of this Tuesday at the age of 90 in Houston, he was the last living witness of that mission that bore the pressure after the Apollo 1 catastrophe, but without the recognition and fame of Apollo 11.

The first Apollo mission paid for the rush of the space race and the cold war. During a test in January 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward H. White II y Roger Chaffee burned to death, suspending manned flights for 20 months. While improvements in design and manufacturing materials were being made, the US was in turmoil over the Vietnam War and civil rights. At the same time, that October 11, 1968, Cunningham, Schirra and Eisele orbited the Earth 140 kilometers above all that. However, peace did not reign within those metal walls either.

“The only thing that didn’t work well was the crew,” the astronaut said at the time. Tom Stafford, commander of Apollo 10 and still a survivor of the mythical American space program. Apollo 7 would be the first mission to carry out a broadcast on television, an issue with which Shirra, the commander – who, moreover, did not get along with the rest of his crew – did not agree. The mood turned even darker when a day later Shirra manifested symptoms of a bad cold that naturally spread to the rest. “We were up to our ass in used tissues”, said Cunningham, who came to NASA from the US Navy air force after splashing down after eleven days circling the Earth (it was a test mission before landing), the then director of operations for nasa Flight, Chris Kraft, promised that none of its crew would fly again. “The mission certainly left a bitter residue on the ground control people,” the astronaut confessed in his memoirs.

After Apollo 7, Cunningham took over the leadership of the first American space station, Skylab, which he considered his main contribution to space flight. In 1971, he retired from NASA, enrolled in Harvard’s advanced management program, and after graduation embarked on a business career. The controversy was a constant that was repeated several times in his life: in 1964 he carried out a campaign in support of the Republican Barry Goldwater (then viewed as a right-wing radical) in the presidential election, and later worked with the Heartland Institute, an organization climate change denier.

In addition, apart from receiving the distinguished and exceptional service medals at NASA and being included in the Hall of Fame of American Astronauts, he was the winner (along with his flight companions) of an Emmy Award in 1969 precisely for his broadcasts space since Apollo 7. He was married twice and had two children with his first wife.

“We would like to express our immense pride in the life he lived and our deep gratitude for the man he was: patriot, explorer, pilot, astronaut, husband, brother and father,” his family has written in a statement in which it also clarifies that he died in the hospital for natural causes. The world has lost another true hero, and he will be greatly missed.”

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