The Right Stuff

At some point in the madhouse scene out back of Hangar S, a photograph was taken in which Ham was either gri

Well, there were some big grins, all right, up in the high desert, at Edwards, among the brethren. Here were some men who had something to smile about. Now the whole business of Project Mercury was no doubt clear to everyone. No one, not even in the general public, could possibly miss the point now. It was that obvious. The first flight—the coveted first flight of the new bird—that full-bore first flight that every test pilot strove for—had just been made in Project Mercury. And the test pilot was an ape! An ape made the first flight! "A college-trained chimpanzee"!—to use the very words that they had heard Astronaut Deke Slayton himself use before the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. And the ape had performed flawlessly, done as well as any man could possibly have done—for there was nothing for a man to do in the Mercury system except push a few perfunctory buttons and switches. This any college-trained chimpanzee could do also! He hadn't missed a beat! Give him a signal and he'll toggle you a switch! To see the point—and surely all the world now saw the point—you only had to imagine sending an ape up for the first flight of the X-15. You would have a twenty-million-dollar hole in the ground and a pulverized ape. But in Project Mercury an ape was fine! First-rate! In fact… the ape was an astronaut! He was the first one! Perhaps the female ape who backed him up deserved the next flight. Let her fly, goddamn it! She has earned it as much as the seven human ones—she's been through the same training!… and so forth and so on… The brethren let their beer-call brains soar. Perhaps the ape would go to the White House and get a medal. (Why not!) Perhaps the ape would address the September meeting of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots in Los Angeles. (Why not!—another astronaut had done it, Deke Slayton, without flying at all!) Oh, it was a laugh and a half, the whole thing. For now the truth was out—it was obvious in a way that no one in the world could miss.

And in the days that followed, the first days of February 1961, the True Brothers waited for this revelation to sweep across the press and the public and the Ke

"My God, do you mean there are men brave enough to try what the ape has just gone through?"

John Gle

Yet the charade, which Gilruth himself insisted on, also offered Gle

He did not argue that he should be the one who was chosen, or not in so many words. He argued that the choice could not be made from a narrow perspective. America's first astronaut would not be merely a test pilot with a mission to carry out; he would be a historic representative of America, and his character would be viewed in that light. If he did not measure up to that test, it would be unfortunate not only for the space program but for the nation.

The new administrator of NASA, appointed by Ke

By now, late February of 1961, Gle