Many admiring personal friends and professional colleagues, myself included, share deep sadness in the loss of “Walt” Cunningham who departed this world (again) on January 3 at age 90.
Caring condolences are extended to his beloved wife and constant companion Dot, his children, and other family members.
Born in Creston, Iowa on March 16, 1932, as the eldest of five siblings, Ronnie Walter Cunningham experienced a life of extraordinary and diverse achievements.
He was later to fly 54 missions as a night fighter pilot in Korea; rise to the rank of Marine colonel; obtain undergrad and master’s degrees with high honors in physics (UCLA), plus complete most requirements for a Harvard PhD; be a crew member of the first manned Apollo mission, which revived NASA’s quest to put men on the moon in the wake of a launch-pad fire that killed three astronauts the previous year; head development of the Skylab program, America’s first space station; and become a successful corporate manager and entrepreneur.
Following Neil Armstrong, mission commander of Gemini VIII with David Scott, Walt was the second civilian in space aboard Apollo 7 alongside command pilot Navy Captain Walter Schirra and navigator Air Force Major Donn Eisele.
The 11-day Oct. 1968 Apollo 7 mission completed 163 orbits of the Earth (four and a half million miles) and became the first to televise astronauts living and working in space.
The Apollo 7 capsule carrying, Schirra, Scott and Cunningham successfully rendezvoused with an empty orbiting upper stage of the Saturn 1-B rocket that launched it to space. This achievement demonstrated future capabilities to dock with a lunar module that would carry two astronauts from the capsule to the moon and back.
The Apollo 7 crew also tested an engine in the rear of their capsule designed to put the spacecraft into and out of lunar orbit. This was soon followed by Apollo 8 in December of that year which carried astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders around the moon, another important prelude to an Apollo 11 landing on July 16, 1969.
Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin passed along his reflection for this article that Walt was his very special personal friend among the Apollo astronauts whose Apollo 7 mission experience brought about vital spaceflight confidence paving the way for his Apollo 11 moon landing with Neil Armstrong to be successful.
After Apollo, Walt Cunningham was appointed to head NASA’s Skylab program in the Johnson Space Center’s Flight Crew Directorate, a role he regarded as his foremost contribution to space flight in developing several major pieces of space hardware and numerous experiments.
Walt retired from NASA in 1970 to enroll in Harvard’s advanced management program in preparation for a business career, later gaining senior executive leadership positions at significant financial, real estate and design/planning companies.
Former Texas Secretary of State Jack Rains, also cofounder of the prominent architecture firm 3D/International where Walt served as director of engineering, shared his tribute to him herein as “a man of unusually keen intellectual curiosity, perception and visionary foresight coupled with a fighter pilot’s decisive confidence.”
Col. Cunningham served as a technical advisor to the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and its graduate program I founded and directed at the University of Houston. He was also a highly valued personal friend who shared a common interest in climate science and its incompetent counterproductive influence on U.S. energy policy.
In April 2012, Walt joined with 48 other NASA scientists and astronauts who sent a letter to then-NASA Administrator Charles Bolden admonishing the agency to stop Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Director James Hansen from making unsupportable alarmist climate claims based upon highly theoretical models while neglecting contrary evidence.
The signatory group included seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA’s Houston Johnson Space Center who stated, “at risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.”
Formally endorsing my first of two books on this subject, “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2011), Walt wrote “Those of us fortunate enough to have traveled in space bet our lives on the competence, dedication, and integrity of the science and technology professionals who made our missions possible.”
He adds, “In the last twenty years, I have watched the high standards of science being violated by a few influential climate scientists, including some at NASA, while special interest opportunists have dangerously abused our public trust.”
As quoted in a previous Aug. 6, 2013, Forbes article I published, Walt said, “With the right leadership, with the right science, and with the right commitment to excellence and integrity, we will go much farther. And it’s high time to do so.”
Col. Walter Cunningham was a pathfinder and traveler whose life examples prove his point.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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