May 5, 2007—Some Astronauts are remembered for quotes like "That’s one small step for man" (Neil Armstrong), or "that may have been a small step for Neil, but it was a big one for me" (Pete Conrad, the Astronaut who landed on the Moon after Armstrong). Wally Schirra may be remembered for his sales pitch for the cold remedy Sudafed, and that’s because he and the crew of Apollo 7 experienced firsthand what cold symptoms in weightlessness can be like.

Schirra died this week of a heart attack at the age of 84. In 1968, he commanded the first test flight of the Apollo moon program which would later pave the way for Armstrong and Conrad on Apollo 11 and 12. Schirra and rookie crewmates Walt Cunningham and Don Eisele blasted off from the same launch pad where Gus Grissom, Roger Chafee, and Ed White died in the Apollo 1 fire the year before.

Back to the cold connection, Schirra caught a cold one hour after liftoff and his crewmates started sniffling the next day. The lack of gravity causes blood to rush to the heads of all Astronauts, so head colds only compounded the misery during Apollo 7. The situation was widely blamed for tension between the crew and mission control, and Schirra’s later turn as TV pitchman for Sudafed.

Along with being the only Astronaut to fly in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft, Schirra was also known as a practical joker. Perhaps the best example of that was in 1990 when the Astronauts’ Hall of Fame opened in Titusville. All of the surviving Mercury Astronauts were there, with the exception of Schirra. As the first American in space, Alan Shepard took reporters around, we passed exhibit booths dedicated to each of the Mercury pioneers. Stretched across Shepard’s booth was a big paper banner reading "Out of Order—Gotcha! Wally Schirra".