Date: October 11 – 22, 1968
Crew: Commander Wally Schirra (45)Command Module Pilot Donn Eisele (38)Lunar Module Pilot Walter Cunningham (36)
Command Module Name: CM-101
Service Module Name: SM-101
Mission Distinctions: First manned mission of the Apollo program; first American 3-man mission; first live public broadcast from space.

Apollo 7 spent 11 days in space – more than all the Soviet missions combined at that time, and it appeared the US program was finally beginning to "pull ahead."
Apollo 7, 8, 9 and 10 each carried a lunar module pilot, even though there were no Lunar Modules yet.
It was the Wally Schirra show! A veteran of Mercury 5 & Gemini 6, he was at that time the oldest man to fly in space, and the first to fly a third mission.
It was no bed of roses, however; Schirra was against having a TV camera in the spacecraft, calling it both a distraction and invasion of privacy. NASA Director Chris Kraft was equally adamant that command modules should begin live broadcasts to the American public.

Upon return splashdown, the module flipped upside-down prior to retrieval, giving crews and controllers some heart-stopper moments until radio contact was re-established... but the entire crew was extracted safely.
In January 1969, the Apollo 7 command module was displayed on a NASA float in the inauguration parade of President Richard M. Nixon. Currently, the Apollo 7 module is on loan to the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas.