Walter Cunningham

Infobox Astronaut
name =Ronnie Walter "Walt" Cunningham


type =Astronaut
nationality =American
status =Retired
date_birth =birth date and age|1932|3|16
place_birth =Creston, Iowa
occupation =Fighter Pilot
rank =Colonel, USMC
selection =1963 NASA Group
time =10d 20h 08m
mission =Apollo 7
insignia =|

Ronnie Walter "Walt" Cunningham (born March 16, 1932) is a retired American astronaut. In 1968, he was the Lunar Module pilot in the Apollo 7 mission.

NASA's second civilian astronaut,Fighter pilot, Col. USMCR-Retired physicist, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author of The All-American Boys, lecturer and host of Lift-off To Logic, a radio talk show.

Biography

Walter Cunningham was born in Creston, Iowa on March 16, 1932. He graduated from Venice High School (where he now has a building named for him) in California.

After high school, Cunningham joined the U.S. Navy in 1951, and began flight training in 1952. He served on active duty as a fighter pilot with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1953 until 1956. From 1956 to 1975 he served in the Marine Corps Reserve program until 1975, when he retired at the rank of Colonel.

Cunningham received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960 and his Master of Arts degree in 1961, both in physics, from the University of California at Los Angeles. He then worked as a scientist for the Rand Corporation.

In October 1963, Cunningham was one of the third group of astronauts selected by NASA. At the time, he was NASA's second civilian astronaut. On October 11 1968, he occupied the lunar module pilot seat for the eleven-day flight of Apollo 7.

He left NASA in 1971, graduated from Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program in 1974, and worked as a business man and investor in a number of private ventures.

In 1977, he published "The All-American Boys", a reminiscence of his astronaut days.Cunningham was also a major contributor and foreword-writer for the 2007 space history book "In the Shadow of the Moon".

Currently he is a radio personality and public speaker. In the 1998 miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" Cunningham was played by Fredric Lehne. Cunningham is a global warming skeptic. [ [http://launchmagonline.com/index.php/Viewpoint/In-Science-Ignorance-is-not-Bliss.html] ]

References

Further reading

*cite book
author=Cunninghan, Walter
isbn=0025292404
title=The All-American Boys
year=1977
publisher=MacMillan Publishing Company
reprint=ISBN 0743486676 (2004)

*cite book
author=French, Francis and Colin Burgess.
title=In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility
publisher=University of Nebraska Press
year=2007
isbn=978-0-8032-1128-5

External links

* [http://www.waltercunningham.com/ Walter Cunningham's personal website]
* [http://www.spacefacts.de/bios/astronauts/english/cunningham_walter.htm Spacefacts biography of Walter Cunningham]