About The Member

Mr. Cunningham has fifty years of diversified management experience accumulated during separate careers in the United States Marine Corps, with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and private industry, including twelve years as a venture capitalist.

Mr. Cunningham is perhaps best known as America’s second civ­ilian Astro­naut. During eight years with NASA he contributed to the design, develop­ment and testing of all the major operating systems of the Apollo spacecraft. In 1966, he was a member of the prime crew of Apollo 2 and backup crew for Apollo 1. When the Apollo 1 prime crew was killed in a fire on the pad he served on the fire investigation board. In 1968, he orbited the earth 163 times as the pilot of Apollo 7 – the first manned flight of the Apollo Pro­gram to land a man on the Moon. Apollo 7 is still the longest, most ambitious and most successful first flight of any manned vehicle. Following the Apollo 7 mission, he became Chief of the Skylab branch of the Astro­naut Office.

He is a Marine Corps fighter pilot with the rank of Colonel, USMCR, Retired, with 4,500 hours of flying time, including 263 hours in space. He has a Master’s Degree in Physics from UCLA and is a graduate of the AMP Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

Since 1971, he has been in private business in Houston, Texas. His experience includes the presidency of two engineering compa­nies, with extensive overseas operations, Vice President of Operations for one of the largest commercial property developers in the U. S. and the presidency of an interactive voice response company.

In 1979, he formed The Capital Group to provide investment banking and consulting services to foreign investors. From 1986 to 1998 he was the Managing General Partner of the Genesis Fund, a ven­­ture capital pool where he was involved in the start-up and early stage development of 23 compa­nies and financial institutions.

This was followed by four years as host of Lift-off to Logic, a radio call-in talk show. Since 2000, he has been writing and speaking out on the hoax that humans are controlling the temperature of the earth.

Mr. Cunningham has been an organizer, investor and Director of numerous public and private companies and a member of the Advisory Panel for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. He is author of "The All American Boys," considered the best one or two books ever written on the space program and numerous articles, including a regular column for Launch Magazine. He lectures throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, is listed in all major Who’s Whos and is a recip­ient of numerous national and inter­national honors, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and election to the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

He has done professional speaking throughout the United States, Europe and Asia on space flight, the universe, education and the global warming debate.

Additional information can be found at his website: www.waltercunningham.com .