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Apollo 7: (L-R) Command Pilot Pilot Don F. Eisele, Commander Walter M. Schirra Jr. and Lunar Module pilot Walter Cunningham.
NASA
By 1968, America's space program was on the brink. A launchpad fire at Cape Canaveral killed three astronauts as they were strapped into their space capsule waiting for takeoff in February 1967. After 20 months of congressional hearings, political fallout and a spacecraft redesign, three new astronauts prepared for a mission dubbed Apollo 7: Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham.
The crew's 11-day mission to orbit the earth was a shakedown for an eventual trip to the moon. NASA broadcast a TV feed from space. Apollo 7 was a crucial step towards Apollo 11's epic journey in July 1969.
But it is also remembered for the testy exchanges between the crew and NASA officials on the ground that has been turned into a mutiny.
Astronauts were unhappy from the start.
The lessons from Apollo 7 continues to resonate to half a century. Apollo 7 showed, disagreements can turn a mission upside down, say experts.
"The crew was going to do what the crew was going to do," says Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator of space history at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. "You can listen to the audio. It is quite tension-filled. It was not playful banter. "
There have been arguments over whether to launch at all, conflicts over television broadcast, complaints about the food, and unhappiness with spacesuits that required 30 minutes for astronauts to use the bathroom. Schirra, a 45-year-old Gemini astronaut and a Navy test pilot, was at the center of the disputes. He had already decided to leave NASA when he was selected for the Apollo 7 mission.
"He had very little at stake," Muir-Harmony says. "That might have something to do with some of his insubordination."
Apollo 7 facelift off from Cape Kennedy Launch Complex 34 on October 11, 1968.
NASA
Wally Schirra was shaken by the death of a fellow astronaut.
Schirra was badly shaken by the death of his friend and neighbor Gus Grissom in the Apollo 1 fire. NASA planned for the Apollo 7 flight, according to Andrew Chaikin, NASA historian and author of NASA A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of The Apollo Astronauts. In the aftermath of the fire, Schirra and everyone else at NASA was on edge.
"It was a terribly traumatic time for NASA," Chaikin says. "Everyone understood they had up their game. After the fire, they had to do everything possible to make the spacecraft safer and better. Apollo 7 was the final exam on whether they were a spacecraft that was up to the challenge. "
Schirra was used to flying by himself, as an aviator and then in the one-man Gemini missions. During the three-man Apollo flight, Schirra seemed to have strong feelings about what it means to be a mission commander.
"He wanted to make the point that the crew was in charge," Chaikin says. "Nobody on the ground is taking the risk that he and his crew was. They were not risking their butts. He felt strongly about that and he had an ornery streak anyway. "
NASA officials made during launch. After the launchpad fire, NASA engineers designed an emergency system that would allow the crew to separate from the rocket booster. A ground-based landing could endanger the crew because the Apollo command module did not have extra padding that was installed in later missions.
On October 14, 1968, the Apollo 7 crew became the first to broadcast live on television from space. In this photo, Schirra and Eisele are seen holding a sign which reads, "Keep the cards and letters coming in, folks!"
NASA
Bad head cold made matters worse.
Controllers and crew agreed that Apollo 7 would not take off at Cape Canaveral were blowing onshore, but on the day of the launch, Oct. 11, 1968, the launch manager decided to go ahead anyway. Schirra was not happy, and he got worse after he woke up the first day with a terrible head cold. In the zero-gravity environment of space, mucus accumulates in the nasal passage and does not drain out of the head. Schirra tried blowing into tissues but found it only made more painful.
Kleenex container, "Cunningham said, according to an NASA ground controller Hamish Lindsay. As Schirra's cold worsened, so did his relationship with Mission Control in Houston. Schirra did not want to participate in a planned TV broadcast until after the crew had finished testing with precision spacecraft booster, but later relented.
The big blow-up occurred at the end of the mission when Schirra told Houston that the crew would not be wearing their helmets during landing. He wanted to be able to blow his nose and clear his nasal passages. NASA said the helmets were needed to prevent accidental capsule depressurization. Schirra won that battle, and the crew returned to Earth safely on Oct. 22.
There would be another such a space until 1973, when three astronauts on Skylab 3 turned off communications with Houston for a day to protest the intense workload of the mission. Schirra left NASA and became TV Commentator alongside Cronkite Walter on the remaining Apollo flights. He also became a TV pitchman for Actifed, makers of the same nasal decongestant he used in space. Eisele and Cunningham never flew in space again.
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