Walter Schirra; Fifth Astronaut in Space

His most famous gag came shortly after completing the first rendezvous in space 10 days before Christmas 1965. As Stafford and Capt. Schirra approached the West Coast about 100 miles up, they reported seeing an unidentified flying object to the north, on a collision course with their spacecraft. The ruse continued for a few minutes until Stafford pulled out his string of bells and Capt. Schirra his tiny harmonica, and the pair performed "Jingle Bells." The UFO, they declared, was Santa Claus in his sleigh.

Capt. Schirra was born in Hackensack, N.J. He took his first flight with his barnstorming father at age 13 and learned to fly before he enrolled at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. After his 1945 graduation, Capt. Schirra served with the Seventh Fleet and flew 90 combat missions during the Korean War. He was credited with shooting down one Soviet MiG-15 and possibly a second. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross and two Air Medals.

He said he initially wasn't interested in the space program. However, after being selected for it in 1959, he sailed through the rigorous training with what one reporter called "the ease of preparing for a family picnic."

He was the third American to orbit the Earth (the first two manned Mercury flights were suborbital), circling the globe six times in nine hours. Of the seven original astronauts -- Alan Shephard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton and Capt. Schirra -- the only survivors now are Glenn and Carpenter.

Capt. Schirra was inducted into the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor in 2000.

Survivors include his wife, Josephine Schirra of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.; and two children.

After Capt. Schirra retired from NASA in 1969, having logged 295 hours and 15 minutes in space, he became president of Regency Investors Inc., a Denver-based leasing and finance company, and then chief executive and chairman of ECOO Corp., an environmental control company. He sat on numerous corporate boards. He moved to Rancho Santa Fe, a San Diego suburb, in 1984. He appeared at the Smithsonian in November to talk about the early days of space flight.

In 1981, he was quoted as saying about space: "Mostly it's lousy out there. It's a hostile environment, and it's trying to kill you. The outside temperature goes from a minus 450 degrees to a plus 300 degrees. You sit in a flying Thermos bottle."

In an interview with the Associated Press last month for Earth Day, he said that when looking at the globe from orbit, he was struck by its fragility and its lack of borders. "I left Earth three times, and found no other place to go," he said. "Please take care of Spaceship Earth."