The Right Stuff

As he neared the completion of his sixth and last orbit, Wally a

Scott picked up the message in his central nervous system even before his mind analyzed it. Unlike the last one, the man was saying. There was even a hint of… unlike the last two.

To complete an operational triumph Schirra now had only to land on target. Carpenter had landed 250 miles off the mark. As he began his descent toward the atmosphere, Wally told Al Shepard, the capcom on Bermuda, near the target area, "I think they're go

That became the verdict on Schirra's performance: "A textbook flight." He had done everything on the checklist. He had turned in a hundred percent performance. He had successfully proved that a man could ride around the earth six times and barely turn a hand or move a muscle and hardly use an ounce of fuel or expend an extra heartbeat and never, not for a moment, surrender to psychological stress, and ride the ship down to a designated drop in the vastness of the ocean. Sigma, summa, Q.E.D.: Operational!

Wally came back to celebrations in Houston and Florida and a big Wally Schirra day in his hometown of Oradell, New Jersey. The next day he went to the White House for congratulations by President Ke

14 — The Club

By and by Conrad started carrying Gle

If Conrad carried both bags, they could keep moving. Gle

Nevertheless, Conrad had made it this time, and that was the main thing. That was all that any really competitive military pilot upon the great ziggurat could focus on any more: becoming an astronaut. By now, only three years later, any such session as he and Wally Schirra and Alan Shepard and Jim Lovell and the others had gone through at the Marriott motel in February of 1959… it was hard to believe it could have ever taken place. Remember Wally that night? Wally!… adding up the pros and cons and agonizing over what the space program might do to his chances of commanding a squadron of F-4Hs! And now Wally—the same Wally with whom they had gone waterskiing on Chesapeake Bay, with whom they had weathered that bad string at Pax River, the old affable prankster himself—now Wally stood at the very apex of the great invisible pyramid of flying. For the seven Mercury astronauts had become the True Brotherhood. They were so dazzling you couldn't even see the erstwhile True Brethren of Edwards Air Force Base any longer.

In April, when NASA a