Tom Wolfe - The Right Stuff

Gus had flown a hundred missions in combat in Korea and had won the Distinguished Flying Cross, after breaking formation to chase away a MiG-15 that was about to jump one of his outfit's reconnaissance planes, although somehow, during that great duck shoot over Korea, to his regret, he had never succeeded in downing an enemy plane. After the war he had done all-weather testing of fighter planes at Wright-Patterson and was highly thought of there. So far he had not reached the big league, which was being prime pilot for testing a new fighter, preferably at Edwards. But Gus had every confidence in himself; which is to say, he was a typical fighter jock heading up the pyramid. He already sensed that winning out in the competition for Project Mercury was a tremendous achievement for him, even if it remained to be seen just how far this advanced a man up the ziggurat.

There was just one odd thing about the situation. Last night, at Langley Field, near Newport News, Virginia, Gus had met the other six pilots who had won out. Two of the Air Force pilots were from Edwards. That was to be expected; Edwards was the big league. But one of them, Gordon Cooper, was a man Gus had known at Wright-Pat at one point, and Cooper was not in Fighter Ops at Edwards. The very hottest pilots at Edwards, of course, were in the rocket-plane projects, the X-series. The best line-test pilots were in Fighter Ops as prime pilots in the testing of aircraft such as the Century series of jet fighters. That was what the other Edwards pilot, Deke Slayton, had been involved in. But Cooper—Cooper had graduated from Test Pilot School and was officially a test pilot, but he had been involved mainly in engineering. Not only that, there was this fellow from the Navy, Scott Carpenter. He seemed to be a likable sort—but he had never been in a fighter squadron. He had been flying multi-engine propeller planes and had only two hundred hours in jets. What did this say about the business of being selected as a Mercury astronaut?

Finally, the NASA people were shooing the photographers away from the table, and the head of NASA, a man with big smooth jowls named T. Keith Glennan, got up and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, today we are introducing to you and to the world these seven men who have been selected to begin training for orbital space flight. These men, the nation's Project Mercury astronauts, are here after a long and perhaps unprecedented series of evaluations which told our medical consultants and scientists of their superb adaptability to their upcoming flight."

And it was probably noticed by no one other than the seven pilots themselves that he mentioned only their adaptability . He had nothing to say, not a word, about their prowess or standing as pilots.

"It is my pleasure," said Glennan, "to introduce to you—and I consider it a very real honor, gentlemen—Malcolm S. Carpenter, Leroy G. Cooper, John H. Glenn, Jr., Virgil I. Grissom, Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Alan B. Shepard, Jr., and Donald K. Slayton… the nation's Mercury Astronauts!"

With that, applause erupted, applause of the most fervent sort, amazing applause. Reporters rose to their feet, applauding as if they had come for no other reason. Smiles of weepy and grateful sympathy washed across their faces. They gulped, they cheered, as if this were one of the most inspiring moments of their lives. Even some of the photographers straightened up from out of their beggar's crouches and let their cameras dangle from their straps, so that they could use their hands for clapping.

But for what?

Once the reporters and photographers got hold of themselves again, men from NASA, the Air Force, and the Navy got up and testified to how terrifically the seven of them had done on all the tests at Lovelace and Wright-Patterson—yet not one word was uttered about any ability or experience they might have had as pilots . The tone of the thing, the angle, didn't improve with the questions from the reporters. The first reporter who raised his hand wanted to know from each of them whether his wife and children had "had anything to say about this."

Wife and children?

Most of them, Gus included, dealt with this question in typical military-pilot fashion. Which is to say, they managed to get out something brief, obvious, abstract, and above all safe and impersonal. But when it becomes the turn of the guy sitting on Gus's left, John Glenn, the only Marine in the group—it's hard to believe. This guy starts turning on the charm ! He has a regular little speech on the subject.

"I don't think any of us could really go on with something like this," he says, "if we didn't have pretty good backing at home, really. My wife's attitude toward this has been the same as it has been all along through my flying. If it is what I want to do, she is behind it, and the kids are, too, a hundred percent."

What the hell was he talking about? I don't think any of us could really go on with something like this… What possible difference could a wife's attitude make about an opportunity for a giant step up the great ziggurat? What was with this guy? It kept on in that fashion. Some reporter gets up and asks them all to tell about their religious affiliations (religious affiliations?)—and Glenn tees off again.

"I am a Presbyterian," he says, "a Protestant Presbyterian, and I take my religion very seriously, as a matter of fact." He starts telling them about all the Sunday schools he has taught at and the church boards he has served on and all the church work that he and his wife and his children have done. "I was brought up believing that you are placed on earth here more or less with sort of a fifty-fifty proposition, and this is what I still believe. We are placed here with certain talents and capabilities. It is up to each of us to use those talents and capabilities as best you can. If you do that, I think there is a power greater than any of us that will place the opportunities in our way, and if we use our talents properly, we will be living the kind of life we should live."

Jesus Christ—share it, brother. You can see the boys cutting glances from either end of the table up at this flying churchman Gus is sitting next to. They're seated in alphabetical order, with Scott Carpenter at one end and Deke Slayton at the other and Glenn in the middle. What can anybody say as a follow-up to this man and his speeches about the Wife and the Children and the Family and Sunday School and God? What can you do, say that as a matter of fact you can get along just as well without any of them as long as they'll let you fly? That didn't seem very prudent. (Turn on the halo—and lie!) You could see these pilots straggling to put up enough chips to stay in the God & Family game with this pious Marine named Glenn.

When it was Gus's turn, he said: "I consider myself religious. I am a Protestant and belong to the Church of Christ. I am not real active in church, as Mr. Glenn is"— Mister Glenn, he calls him—''but I consider myself a good Christian still." Deke Slayton says: "As far as my religious faith is concerned, I am a Lutheran, and I go to church periodically." One of the Navy pilots, Alan Shepard, says: "I am not a member of any church. I attend the Christian Science Church regularly." And so it went. It was a struggle.

God… Family… the only thing that Glenn hadn't wrapped them all up in was Country, and so he took care of that, too. He gave a nice little speech that started with Orville and Wilbur Wright standing on a hill at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, tossing a coin to see which one would take the first airplane flight, and then he tied that in with the first space flight. "I think we are very fortunate," he said, "that we have, should we say, been blessed with the talents that have been picked for something like this." (No one had said a word about talents , however.) "I think we would be most remiss in our duty," he went on, "if we didn't make the fullest use of our talents in volunteering for something that is as important as this is to our country and to the world in general right now. This can mean an awful lot to this country, of course."