Had dinner tonight with Walt Cunningham, Apollo 7 Astronaut

I was in Houston for business today, and one of the guys I work with was a former NSA White House operative to Reagan and Clinton. I've mentioned him on here previously. I had others from my company in, too. Anyway, the guy set up a dinner with a buddy of his, Walt Cunningham, who was an astronaut on Apollo 7. This was the first manned Apollo mission after the disastrous fire that took the lives of astronauts Grissom, White and Chaffee. Walt was the Lunar Module pilot on this flight. These guys had to have balls of steel to know that the entire future of the space program hinged on their success.

The guy was sharp as a tack for 84 years old. He actually is a physicist and ex-Marine fighter pilot. He had opinions on quite a few issues, such as:

Man made global warming:"bullshite. The current parts per million of 400 that has climatologists claiming it causes warming is wrong, and that onboard the Apollo mission, the tolerance was 9000 parts per million, later reduced to 5000, raised to 10,000 for the shuttle and now back to 7500 for the International Space Station." Now maybe that's an apples to oranges comparison, but it's what he offered.

Snowflakes: "These people need to be engaged at every opportunity. They live in a state of unreality and have no appreciation of sacrifice for the country or of how to work with people who see things differently that you do. Wally Schirra (commander of Apollo 7) was a pure a-hole, but we worked together towards a unifying purpose. That's what people today seem to miss. A unifying purpose for the welfare of the country. All they care about, today, is how things impact them. Well, how about 'how the frick does your selfishness impact everybody else?' I tell you, it's time we acted like Israel and make sure that everyone has skin in the game for the bettermment of this country before it's too late for all of us."

Finally, we were all drinking, so one of the questions one of the guys asked him Walt said he'd never been asked before. "Do astronauts jerk off in space, and if they do, what do they do with the jizz?"

He just looked the guy in the eye and said (laughing with a big smile), "That's none of your fricking business!" We all laughed.

When we left, the valet brought this 84 year old man his car. A 2015 Corvette Z07. He looked at us as the valet handed him the key and said, "What? You expect an astronaut to drive a Lexus?"

Damn it, they just don't make real men like this anymore, guys that would sit on top of a 363 foot tall rocket.

Walt Cunningham