Goodbye to one of Americas Heroes

[SirNik73]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070503/ap_on_re_us/obit_schirra;_ylt=AuZ9BREQDI7GQFYYJ5Iw9wjMWM0F


Wally Schirra Died today. I don't know about the rest of you guys, but the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo Astronauts were always heroes to me. I'm not that old, I'm only 23, but what they did fueled my imagination as a kid, and I remember doing almost all my school projects on the space race. Just last night I was watching "From the Earth to the Moon" I love everything have to do with the space race. Something about America being bad a$$. And to think of the technology in our chargers, and think that with that level of technology we went to the moon. And now, look at your cell phone... and we can't even get into orbit... maybe its not about the technology, maybe it's about guys like Wally Schirra, real American heroes.

[Shakey]

Kristina, my three year old, is mesmerized by the moon, ever since she was, well younger.  To this day she gets excited to see it whether it be during the daylight hours or in the evening before bed.  She tells us when she gets older, she's going there to "check it out".

[Charger_Fan]

The early astronauts were all heroic pioneers in the grandest sense...absolute nads of STEEL! Not to discount the astronauts of today, but that first bunch were definitely something special. Strapping yourself atop a massive gas can, not knowing if any one of the thousands of little gremlins on the ship that weren't quite worked out yet could be the one to fail & take you out.
Lots of those guys died in such a way, when some little thing went wrong.

RIP, Mr. Schirra

[Big Lebowski]

  No one will believe this but I met Wally Schirra the day Gene Roddenberry died, Gene, of course was the creator of Star Trek. I was on the San Diego Miramar (Navy back then) air base with Dad at the old folks "Rest & Aspiration club" Don't ask why I was there, but anyway, it was a club dinner in an F-14 hangar with killer food & beer & stairs up to the F-14 cockpit.

        Anyway, I had NO idea that I was talking to a great NASA astronaut. Wally & I talked for an hour about Gene, Star Trek, & the future. So my Dad walks up and says..."I see you found one of our finest Nasa Astronauts, Wally Schirra."

        Me being young & stupid, I said..."No way, you went to the moon?" He said..."No, I went around the Moon."
I felt like an idiot for talking to him for about an hour and not knowing who he was. But he liked talking to me, just an average guy about how we were both sad about the death that day of Star Trek's creator Gene Roddenberry.

                                         Believe it, I was there. RIP 

[Charger_Fan]

That's pretty neat.
I met & talked to Jake Garn one day, but that's just not the same as meeting someone like Wally Schirra.

[SirNik73]

I met a couple of the shuttle astronauts, and that was exciting. but having a chance to meet one of the original astronauts would realy be awesome.

[Ponch ®]

I met a couple of the shuttle astronauts, and that was exciting. but having a chance to meet one of the original astronauts would realy be awesome.

Those guys had balls. Not that today's astronauts don't face incredible danger...but back then they really didn't have much of a chance for survival. But they still got on top of a rocket that was liable to blow up. And our rockets always blew up.

"As to just what this ineffable quality was. . .well, it obviously involved bravery. But it was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life. . .any fool could do that. . . . No, the idea. . .seemed to be that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment--and then to go up again the next day, and the next day, and every next day. . . . There was a seemingly infinite series of tests. . .a dizzy progression of steps and ledges. . .a pyramid extraordinarily high and steep; and the idea was to prove at every foot of the way up that pyramid that you were one of the elected and anointed ones who had the right stuff and could move higher and higher and even--ultimately, God willing, one day--that you might be able to join that special few at the very top, that elite who had the capacity to bring tears to men's eyes, the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself." - Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff