First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini

Introduction

Humanity has dreamed of traveling into space for centuries, but in the twentieth century, scientific and technical capabilities converged with this dream for the first time. From the work of Robert H. Goddard through the heroic era of spaceflight into the 1960s, the modern age of rocketry signaled a beginning that would eventually lead to human flights beyond Earth to the Moon. All of these enthusiasts believed humanity would soon explore and eventually colonize the solar system. And many of them worked relentlessly to make that belief a reality. They successfully convinced a large majority of Americans of spaceflight’s possibility. Through their constant public relations efforts during the decade following World War II, they engineered a sea change in perceptions, as most Americans went from skepticism about the probabilities of spaceflight to an acceptance of it as a near-term reality.

This is apparent in the public opinion polls of the era. In December 1949, Gallup pollsters found that only 15 percent of Americans believed humans would reach the Moon within 50 years, while 15 percent had no opinion, and a whopping 70 percent believed that it would not happen within that time. In October 1957, at the same time as the launching of Sputnik I, only 25 percent believed that it would take longer than 25 years for humanity to reach the Moon, while 41 percent believed firmly that it would happen within 25 years, and 34 percent were not sure. An important shift in perceptions had taken place, and it was largely the result of well-known advances in rocket technology coupled with a public relations campaign that emphasized the real possibilities of spaceflight.

Indeed, by the end of World War II, all the technical assessments suggested that it was only a matter of a few years before the United States would be able to place a satellite in orbit around Earth and, ultimately, to place a human in a capsule for orbital activities. In 1946, for instance, the forerunner of the Rand Corporation completed an engineering analysis of an Earth satellite vehicle for the Army Air Forces, finding important military support functions possible ranging from weather forecasting to secure global communications to strategic reconnaissance. Later, military analysts thought there might be a role for piloted military missions in space, and that, along with the exploration imperative, drove efforts to make human spaceflight a reality. By the middle part of the 1950s, the spaceflight advocacy community was actively advocating, as later ensconced in the NASA long-range plan of 1959, “the manned exploration of the Moon and nearby planets.” They called for the “first launching in a program leading to manned circumlunar flight and to a permanent near-Earth space station” that would make a human mission to the Moon possible.

The von Braun Paradigm

All of the prospective futures for the near term contemplated by spaceflight pioneers ended with a human expedition to Mars. Without question, the most powerful vision of spaceflight since the early 1950s has been that articulated by Wernher von Braun, one of the most important rocket developers and champions of space exploration during the period between the 1930s and the 1970s. Working for the German Army between 1934 and 1945, von Braun led the technical effort to develop the V-2, the first ballistic missile, and deliberately surrendered to the Americans at the close of World War II because he said he desired to work for a rich and benevolent uncle, in this case Uncle Sam. For 15 years after World War II, von Braun worked with the U.S. Army in the development of ballistic missiles. Von Braun became one of the most prominent spokesmen of space exploration in the U.S. in the 1950s. In 1952 he gained note as a participant in an important symposium dedicated to the subject and he gained notoriety among the public in the fall of 1952 with a series of articles in Collier’s, a popular weekly periodical of the era. He also became a house hold name following his appearance on three Disney television shows dedicated to space exploration in the mid-1950s. Indeed, no one became more significant as an advocate for space exploration in the first part of the Space Age than von Braun, whose ideas influenced millions and charted the course of space exploration in the U.S. Central to von Braun’s ideas was the human exploration of space; there was virtually no room in his vision for robotic spaceflight.

From the 1950s on, this German émigré called for an integrated space exploration plan centered on human movement beyond this planet and involving these basic steps accomplished in this order:

1. Earth orbital satellites to learn about the requirements for space technology that must operate in a hostile environment (initially soft-pedaled by von Braun but later embraced in such missions as Explorer 1).

2. Earth orbital flights by humans to determine whether or not it was possible to explore and settle other places.

3. A reusable spacecraft for travel to and from Earth orbit, thereby extending the principles of atmospheric flight into space and making routine space operations.

4. A permanently inhabited space station as a place both to observe Earth and from which to launch future expeditions. This would serve as the base camp at the bottom of the mountain or the fort in the wilderness from which exploring parties would depart.

5. Human exploration of the Moon with the intention of creating Moon bases and eventually permanent colonies.

6. Human expeditions to Mars, eventually colonizing the planet.

This has become known over time as the von Braun paradigm for the human colonization of the solar system. This approach would lead, von Braun believed, in the establishment of a new and ultimately perfect human society elsewhere in the solar system.

This integrated plan has cast a long shadow over American efforts in space for over 50 years. It conjured powerful images of people venturing into the unknown to make a perfect society free from the boundaries found on Earth. As such, it represented a coherent and compelling definition of American ideals in space. In many respects, von Braun’s vision of space exploration has served as the model for U.S. efforts in space through the end of the 20th century. His vision was constrained by the time in which he lived, for without a coherent vision of the rise of electronics, he failed to perceive the role of robotic explorers. As John H. Gibbons, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology during the Clinton administration, said in 1995:

“The von Braun paradigm—that humans were destined to physically explore the solar system—which he so eloquently described in Collier’s magazine in the early 1950’s was bold, but his vision was highly constrained by the technology of his day. For von Braun, humans were the most powerful and flexible exploration tool that he could imagine. Today we have within our grasp technologies that will fundamentally redefine the exploration paradigm. We have the ability to put our minds where our feet can never go. We will soon be able to take ourselves—in a virtual way—anywhere from the interior of a molecule to the planets circling a nearby star—and there exclaim, “Look honey, I shrunk the Universe!””

Most important, von Braun’s integrated approach to space exploration was ensconced in the NASA long-range plan of 1959, and, with the exception of a jump from human orbital flights to a lunar (Apollo) mission driven by political concerns, the history of spaceflight has followed this paradigm consistently. Following the Apollo missions, NASA returned to the building of winged reusable spacecraft (the Space Shuttle), and a space station (Freedom/International Space Station) and, in 2004, embarked on human lunar and Mars expeditions. This adherence to the paradigm is either a testament to the amazing vision of Wernher von Braun or to a lack of imagination by NASA leaders, but the best guess suggests that it lies somewhere between the two.

The NACA and Spaceflight Research

During the latter part of World War II, leaders of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor to NASA, had become interested in the possibilities of high-speed guided missiles and the future of spaceflight. It created the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD), under the leadership of a young and promising engineer at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Robert R. Gilruth. In early 1945, NACA asked Congress for a supplemental appropriation to fund the activation of a unit to carry out this research, and a short time later the NACA opened the Auxiliary Flight Research Station (AFRS), which was later redesignated the name by which it gained fame, PARD, with Gilruth as Director.

Established at Wallops Island as a test-launching facility of Langley on 4 July 1945, PARD launched its first test vehicle, a small two-stage, solid-fuel rocket to check out the installation’s instrumentation. Beyond a series of exploratory flight tests of rocket models, Gilruth’s PARD advanced the knowledge of aerodynamics at transonic and, later, hypersonic speeds. They did so through exhaustive testing, which some at Langley considered excessive and overly expensive, launching at least 386 models between 1947 and 1949, leading to the publication of NACA’s first technical report on rocketry, “Aerodynamic Problems of Guided Missiles,” in 1947. From this, Gilruth and PARD filled in tremendous gaps in the knowledge of spaceflight. As historian James R. Hansen writes: “the early years of the rocket-model program at Wallops (1945–1951) showed that Langley was able to tackle an enormously difficult new field of research with innovation and imagination.”

The NACA leadership believed that human spaceflight could be achieved within a decade after 1952, and Gilruth served as an active promoter of the idea within the organization. He helped to engineer the creation of an interagency board to review “research on spaceflight and associated problems” with an end to advancing the cause of human spaceflight (I-1). For example, while Gilruth was interested in orbiting an artificial satellite, it did not capture his imagination. As he recalled, “When you think about putting a man up there, that’s a different thing. That’s a lot more exciting. There are a lot of things you can do with men up in orbit.” This led to concerted efforts to develop the technology necessary to make it a reality. In 1952, for example, PARD started the development of multistage, hypersonic, solid-fuel rocket vehicles. These vehicles were used primarily in aerodynamic heating tests at first and were then directed toward a reentry physics research program. On 14 October 1954, the first American four-stage rocket was launched by PARD, and in August 1956 it launched a five-stage, solid-fuel rocket test vehicle, the world’s first, that reached a speed of Mach 15.13

At the same time, H. Julian Allen at NACA’s Ames Research Center began research on recovery of objects from orbit. In the early 1950s, he found that a blunt-nose body experienced less heating and dissipated it more quickly than a pointed body during the reentry; the pointed body was likely to burn up before reaching Earth’s surface. Allen’s work fundamentally shaped the course of spaceflight research and provided the basis for all successful reentry vehicles. It became the standard technology used in reconnaissance, warhead, and human reentry missions from the;1950s to the present. Based upon this research, in 1955 General Electric (GE) engineers began work on the Mark 2 reentry vehicle. While an overall success, GE adopted a heat-sink concept for the Mark 2 vehicle, whereby the heat of reentry was conducted from the surface of the vehicle to a mass of material that could soak it up quickly. The key was to dissipate the heat away from the surface fast enough so that it did not melt. By 1956, Allen and other researchers had noticed that reinforced plastics had proven more resistant to heating than most other materials. They proposed coating the reentry vehicle with a material that absorbed heat, charred, and either flaked off or vaporized. As it did so, these “ablative” heatshields took away the absorbed heat (I-2).

While Gilruth experimented with launch technology, and Allen worked on spacecraft recovery, both became very interested in the prospects for human spaceflight. They became aware of the Collier’s series of articles on space, the first of which appeared on 22 March 1952. In it readers were asked by Wernher von Braun, “What Are We Waiting For?” and urged to support an aggressive space program. Clearly the Collier’s series helped to shape the perceptions of many at NACA that spaceflight was something that was no longer fantasy. Gilruth recalled of von Braun and his ideas: “I thought that was fascinating. He was way ahead of all of us guys . . . everybody was a space cadet in those days. I thought a space station was very interesting.”

In more than 12 years NACA made some significant strides in the development of the technology necessary to reach orbital flight above the atmosphere. Clearly, PARD held the lion’s share of knowledge in NACA about the nascent field of astronautics. And it enjoyed renewed attention and funding once the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik I, on 4 October 1957. “I can recall watching the sunlight reflect off of Sputnik as it passed over my home on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia,” Gilruth commented in 1972. “It put a new sense of value and urgency on things we had been doing. When one month later the dog Laika was placed in orbit in Sputnik II, I was sure that the Russians were planning for man-in-space.”

In the aftermath of the Sputnik crisis, NACA proceeded with efforts to advance human spaceflight even as plans were underway in 1958 to transform it into a new space agency. NACA engineers developed plans for a human spaceflight proposal during the spring of the year. As a part of this effort they considered the best method for reaching space. At a series of meetings to discuss planning for human-in-space program approaches being developed by U.S. industry in January–February 1958, NACA officials found:

“Proposals fell into two rough categories: (a) a blunt-nose cone or near-spherical zero-lift high-drag vehicle of a ton to a ton-and-a-half weight, and (b) a hypersonic glider of the ROBO or Dyna-Soar type. The first category of vehicles used existing ICBM vehicles as boosters; the second used more complex and arbitrary multiplex arrangements of existing large-thrust rocket engines. A number of contractors looked at the zero-lift high-drag minimum weight vehicle as the obvious expedient for beating the Russians and the Army into space. Others, notably Bell, Northrup, and Republic Aviation, set this idea aside as a stunt and consequently these contractors stressed the more elaborate recoverable hypersonic glider vehicle as the practical approach to the problems of flight in space (I-3).”

By April 1958, NACA engineers had concluded that the first of these options should become the basis for NACA planning for an initial human spaceflight (I-4).

It soon became obvious to all that an early opportunity to launch human spacecraft into orbit would require the development of blunt-body capsules launched on modified multistage intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Robert Gilruth recalled one of these decisions:

“Because of its great simplicity, the non-lifting, ballistic-type of vehicle was the front runner of all proposed manned satellites, in my judgment. There were many variations of this and other concepts under study by both government and industry groups at that time. The choice involved considerations of weight, launch vehicle, reentry body design, and to be honest, gut feelings. Some people felt that man-in-space was only a stunt. The ballistic approach, in particular, was under fire since it was such a radical departure from the airplane. It was called by its opponents ‘the man in the can,’ and the pilot was termed only a ‘medical specimen.’ Others thought it was just too undignified a way to fly.”

While initially criticized as an inelegant, impractical solution to the challenge of human spaceflight, the ballistic spacecraft concept gained momentum as NACA engineers, led by Maxime A. Faget, championed the approach. At a meeting on human spaceflight held at Ames on 18 March 1958, a NACA position emerged on this approach to human spaceflight, reflecting Faget’s ideas. By April 1958, NACA had completed several studies “on the general problems of manned-satellite vehicles,” finding that they could build in the near term “a basic drag-reentry capsule” of approximately 2,000 pounds and sufficient volume for a passenger.

In August 1958, Faget and his designers developed preliminary specifications that then went to industry, especially the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, for a ballistic capsule. Faget and his colleagues emphasized the simplicity, if not the elegance, of a ballistic capsule for the effort:

“The ballistic reentry vehicle also has certain attractive operational aspects which should be mentioned. Since it follows a ballistic path there is a minimum requirement for autopilot, guidance, or control equipment. This condition not only results in a weight saving but also eliminates the hazard of malfunction. In order to return to Earth from orbit, the ballistic reentry vehicle must properly perform only one maneuver. This maneuver is the initiation of reentry by firing the retrograde rocket. Once this maneuver is completed (and from a safety standpoint alone it need not be done with a great deal of precision), the vehicle will enter Earth’s atmosphere. The success of the reentry is then dependant only upon the inherent stability and structural integrity of the vehicle. These are things of a passive nature and should be thoroughly checked out prior to the first man-carrying flight. Against these advantages the disadvantage of large area landing by parachute with no corrective control during the reentry must be considered.”

The Mercury spacecraft that flew in 1961 to 1963 emerged from these early conceptual studies by NACA engineers (I-9).

Man-in-Space Soonest

At the same time that NACA was pursuing its studies for a human spaceflight program, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) proposed the development of a piloted orbital spacecraft under the title of “Man-in-Space Soonest” (MISS). Initially discussed before the launch of Sputnik I in October 1957, afterwards the Air Force invited Dr. Edward Teller and several other leading members of the scientific/technological elite to study the issue of human spaceflight and make recommendations for the future. Teller’s group concluded that the Air Force could place a human in orbit within two years and urged that the department pursue this effort. Teller understood, however, that there was essentially no military reason for undertaking this mission and chose not to tie his recommendation to any specific rationale, falling back on a basic belief that the first nation to do so would accrue national prestige and advance, in a general manner, science and technology. Soon after the new year, Lieutenant General Donald L. Putt, the USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for Development, informed NACA Director Hugh L. Dryden of the intention of the Air Force to aggressively pursue “a research vehicle program having as its objective the earliest possible manned orbital flight which will contribute substantially and essentially to follow-on scientific and military space systems.” Putt asked Dryden to collaborate in this effort, but with NACA as a decidedly junior partner. Dryden agreed; however, by the end of the summer he would find the newly created NASA leading the human spaceflight effort for the United States, with the Air Force being the junior player.

Notwithstanding the lack of clear-cut military purpose, the Air Force pressed for MISS throughout the first part of 1958, clearly expecting to become the lead agency in any space program of the U.S. Specifically, it believed hypersonic space planes and lunar bases would serve national security needs in the coming decades well. To help make that a reality, it requested $133 million for the MISS program and secured approval for the effort from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Throughout this period, a series of disagreements between Air Force and NACA officials rankled both sides. The difficulties reverberated all the way to the White House, prompting a review of the roles of the two organizations (I-5, I-6, I-7). The normally staid and proper Director of NACA, Hugh L. Dryden, complained in July 1958 to the President’s science advisor, James R. Killian, of the lack of clarity on the role of the Air Force versus NACA. He asserted that “the current objective for a manned satellite program is the determination of man’s basic capability in a space environment as a prelude to the human exploration of space and to possible military applications of manned satellites. Although it is clear that both the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Defense should cooperate in the conduct of the program, I feel that the responsibility for and the direction of the program should rest with NASA.” He urged that the President state a clear division between the two organizations on the human spaceflight mission (I-8).

As historians David N. Spires and Rick W. Sturdevant have pointed out, the MISS program became derailed within the Department of Defense (DOD) at essentially the same time because of funding concerns and a lack of clear military mission:

“Throughout the spring and summer of 1958 the Air Force’s Air Research and Development Command had mounted an aggressive campaign to have ARPA convince administration officials to approve its Manin-Space-Soonest development plan. But ARPA [Advanced Research Projects Agency] balked at the high cost, technical challenges, and uncertainties surrounding the future direction of the civilian space agency.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 into law at the end of July and, during the next month, assigned the USAF’s human spaceflight mission to NASA. Thereafter, the MISS program was folded into what became Project Mercury. By early November 1958, the DOD had acceded to the President’s desire that the human spaceflight program be a civilian effort under the management of NASA. For its part, NASA invited Air Force officials to appoint liaison personnel to the Mercury program office at Langley Research Center, and they did so.

Beginning Project Mercury

Everyone recognized that time was of the essence in undertaking the human spaceflight project that NASA would now lead. Roy Johnson, director of ARPA for the DOD, noted in September 1958 that competition with the Soviet Union precluded taking a cautious approach to the human spaceflight initiative and advocated additional funding to ensure its timely completion. As he wrote to the Secretary of Defense and the NASA Administrator:

“I am troubled, however, with respect to one of the projects in which there is general agreement that it should be a joint undertaking. This is the so-called “Man-in-Space” project for which $10 million has been allocated to ARPA and $30 million to NASA. My concern over this project is due 1) to a firm conviction, backed by intelligence briefings, that the Soviets next spectacular effort in space will be to orbit a human, and 2) that the amount of $40 million for FY 1959 is woefully inadequate to compete with the Russian program. As you know our best estimates (based on some 12–15 plans) were $100 to $150 million for an optimum FY 1959 program. I am convinced that the military and psychological impact on the United States and its Allies of a successful Soviet man-in-space “first” program would be far reaching and of great consequence. Because of this deep conviction, I feel that no time should be lost in launching an aggressive Man-in-Space program and that we should be prepared if the situation warrants, to request supplemental appropriations of the Congress in January to pursue the program with the utmost urgency (I-10).”

Johnson agreed to transfer a series of space projects from ARPA to NASA but urged more timely progress on development of the space vehicle itself. Two weeks later, ARPA and NASA established protocols for cooperating in the aggressive development of the capsule that would be used in the human spaceflight program (I-11).

To aid in the conduct of this program, ARPA and NASA created a panel for Manned Spaceflight, also referred to as the Joint Manned Satellite Panel, on 18 September 1958. Holding its first meeting on 24 September, the panel established goals and strategy for the program. Chaired by Robert Gilruth and including such NASA leaders as Max Faget and George Low, the panel focused on a wide range of technical requirements necessary to complete the effort. Under this panel’s auspices, final specifications for the piloted capsule emerged in October 1958, as did procurement of both modified Redstone (for suborbital flights) and Atlas (for orbital missions) boosters (I-12, I-13, I-14).

Just six days after the establishment of NASA on 1 October 1958, NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan approved plans for a piloted satellite project to determine if human spaceflight was possible, and on 8 October he established the Space Task Group at Langley Research Center under Robert Gilruth. Thirty-five key staff members from Langley, some of whom had been working the military human spaceflight plan, were transferred to the new Space Task Group, as were 10 others from the Lewis Research Center near Cleveland, Ohio (I-15, I-16). These 45 engineers formed the nucleus of the more than 1,000-person workforce that eventually took part in Project Mercury, so named on 26 November 1958 (I-17, I-18). On 14 November, Gilruth requested the highest national priority procurement rating for Project Mercury, but that did not come until 27 April 1959 (I-23). As Glennan recalled, “the philosophy of the project was to use known technologies, extending the state of the art as little as necessary, and relying on the unproven Atlas. As one looks back, it is clear that we did not know much about what we were doing. Yet the Mercury program was one of the best organized and managed of any I have been associated with.” Throughout the fall of 1958, therefore, NASA leaders worked to press the Mercury program through to flight initially conceived as possible before the end of 1959 (I-19).

The Role of the Mercury Seven Astronauts

As an important step in moving forward with Project Mercury, NASA selected and trained the astronaut corps. Although NASA at first intended to hold an open competition for entry into the astronaut corps, over the 1958 Christmas holiday, President Dwight D. Eisenhower directed that the astronauts be selected from among the armed services’ test pilot force. Indeed, NASA Administrator T. Keith Glennan visited the White House over Christmas of 1958. “When he came back to NASA,” NASA Chief Historian Eugene Emme wrote in 1964, “Project Mercury was to possess classified aspects and the astronauts were to be military test pilots.” Although this had not been NASA leadership’s first choice, this decision greatly simplified the selection procedure. The inherent riskiness of spaceflight, and the potential national security implications of the program, pointed toward the use of military personnel. It also narrowed and refined the candidate pool, giving NASA a reasonable starting point for selection. It also made good sense in that NASA envisioned the astronaut corps first as pilots operating experimental flying machines, and only later as working scientists.

As historian Margaret Weitekamp has concluded in a recent study:

“From that military test flying experience, the jet pilots also mastered valuable skills that NASA wanted its astronauts to possess. Test pilots were accustomed to flying high-performance aircraft, detecting a problem, diagnosing the cause, and communicating that analysis to the engineers and mechanics clearly. In addition, they were used to military discipline, rank, and order. They would be able to take orders. Selecting military jet test pilots as their potential astronauts allowed NASA to choose from a cadre of highly motivated, technically skilled, and extremely disciplined pilots.”

In addition, since most NASA personnel in Project Mercury came out of the aeronautical research and development arena anyway, it represented almost no stretch on the Agency’s part to accept test pilots as the first astronauts. (It also guaranteed, as Weitekamp notes, that all of the original astronauts would be male.) After all, NACA had been working with the likes of them for decades and knew and trusted their expertise. It also tapped into a highly disciplined and skilled group of individuals, most of whom were already aerospace engineers, who had long ago agreed to risk their lives in experimental vehicles.

NASA pursued a rigorous process to select the eventual astronauts that became known as the Mercury Seven. The process involved record reviews, biomedical tests, psychological profiles, and a host of interviews. In November 1958, aeromedical consultants working for the Space Task Group at Langley had worked out preliminary procedures for the selection of astronauts to pilot the Mercury spacecraft. They then advertised among military test pilots for candidates for astronauts, receiving a total of 508 applications (I-20). They then screened the service records in January 1959 at the military personnel bureaus in Washington and found 110 men that met the minimum standards established for Mercury:

1. Age—less than 40

2. Height—less than 5’11”

3. Excellent physical condition

4. Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

5. Graduate of test pilot school

6. 1,500 hours total flying time

7. Qualified jet pilot

This list of names included 5 Marines, 47 Navy aviators, and 58 Air Force pilots. Several Army pilots’ records had been screened earlier, but none was a graduate of a test pilot school. The selection process began while the possibility of piloted Mercury/Redstone flights late in 1959 still existed, so time was a critical factor is the screening process.

A grueling selection process began in January 1959. Headed by the Assistant Director of the Space Task Group, Charles J. Donlan, the evaluation committee divided the list of 110 arbitrarily into three groups and issued invitations for the first group of 35 to come to Washington at the beginning of February for briefings and interviews (I-22). Donlan’s team initially planned to select 12 astronauts, but as team member George M. Low reported:

“During the briefings and interviews it became apparent that the final number of pilots should be smaller than the twelve originally planned for. The high rate of interest in the project indicates that few, if any, of the men will drop out during the training program. It would, therefore, not be fair to the men to carry along some who would not be able to participate in the flight program. Consequently, a recommendation has been made to name only six finalists.”

Every one of the first 10 pilots interrogated on 2 February agreed to continue through the elimination process. The next week a second group of possible candidates arrived in Washington. The high rate of volunteering made it unnecessary to extend the invitations to the third group. By the first of March 1959, 32 pilots prepared to undergo a rigorous set of physical and mental examinations.

Thereafter each candidate went to the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to undergo individual medical evaluations. Phase four of the selection program involved passing an elaborate set of environmental studies, physical endurance tests, and psychiatric studies conducted at the Aeromedical Laboratory of the Wright Air Development Center, Dayton, Ohio. During March 1959 each of the candidates spent another week in pressure suit tests, acceleration tests, vibration tests, heat tests, and loud noise tests. Continuous psychiatric interviews, the necessity of living with two psychologists throughout the week, an extensive self-examination through a battery of 13 psychological tests for personality and motivation, and another dozen different tests on intellectual functions and special aptitudes—these were all part of the Dayton experience (I-29).

Finally, without conclusive results from these tests, late in March 1959 NASA’s Space Task Group began phase five of the selection, narrowing the candidates to 18. Thereafter, final criteria for selecting the candidates reverted to the technical qualifications of the men and the technical requirements of the program, as judged by Charles Donlan and his team members. NASA finally decided to select seven. The seven men became heroes in the eyes of the American public almost immediately, in part due to a deal they made with Life magazine for exclusive rights to their stories, and without NASA quite realizing it, they became the personification of NASA to most Americans.

NASA unveiled the Mercury Seven in the spring of 1959, a week before the cherry blossoms bloomed along the tidal basin in Washington, DC, drenching the city with spectacular spring colors. NASA chose to announce the first Americans who would have an opportunity to fly in space on 9 April 1959. Excitement bristled in Washington at the prospect of learning who those space travelers might be. Surely they were the best the nation had to offer, modern versions of medieval “knights of the round table” whose honor and virtue were beyond reproach. Certainly they carried on their shoulders all of the hopes and dreams and best wishes of a nation as they engaged in single combat the ominous specter of communism. The fundamental purpose of Project Mercury was to determine whether or not humans could survive the rigors of liftoff and orbit in the harsh environment of space. From this perspective, the astronauts were not comparable to earlier explorers who directed their own exploits. Comparisons between them and Christopher Columbus, Admiral Richard Byrd, and Sir Edmund Hillary left the astronauts standing in the shadows.

NASA’s makeshift Headquarters was abuzz with excitement. Employees had turned the largest room of the second floor of Dolly Madison House facing Lafayette Park near the White House, once a ballroom, into a hastily set-up press briefing room. Inadequate for the task, print and electronic media jammed into the room to see the first astronauts. One end of the room sported a stage complete with curtain and both NASA officials and the newly chosen astronauts waited behind it for the press conference to begin at 2:00 p.m. The other end had electrical cable strewn about the floor, banks of hot lights mounted to illuminate the stage, more than a few television cameras that would be carrying the event live, and movie cameras recording footage for later use. News photographers gathered at the foot of the stage and journalists of all stripes occupied seats in the gallery. Since the room was inadequate for the media, NASA employees brought in more chairs and tried to make the journalists as comfortable as possible in the cramped surroundings.

Many of the Mercury Seven astronauts have recorded their recollections of this singular event and all expressed the same hesitation and dread that Glennan experienced. They also expressed irritation at the huge and unruly audience assembled for the press conference. Alan Shepard and Donald ‘Deke’ Slayton had a brief conversation as they sat down at the table behind the curtain and contemplated the event ahead:

““Shepard,” Deke leaned toward him. “I’m nervous as hell. You ever take part in something like this?” Alan grinned. “Naw.” He raised an eyebrow. “Well, not really. Anyway, I hope it’s over in a hurry.” “Uh huh. Me, too,” Deke said quickly.”

When the curtain went up NASA Public Affairs Officer par excellence Walter Bonney announced:

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. The rules of this briefing are very simple. In about sixty seconds we will give you the announcement that you have been waiting for: the names of the seven volunteers who will become the Mercury astronaut team. Following the distribution of the kit—and this will be done as speedily as possible— those of you who have p.m. deadline problems had better dash for your phones. We will have about a ten- or twelve-minute break during which the gentlemen will be available for picture taking.”

Like a dam breaking, a sea of photographers moved forward and popped flashbulbs in the faces of the Mercury Seven astronauts. A buzz in the conference room rose to a roar as this photo shoot proceeded. Some of the journalists bolted for the door with the press kit to file their stories for the evening papers; others ogled the astronauts.

Fifteen minutes later Bonney brought the room to order and asked Keith Glennan to come out and formally introduce the astronauts. Glennan offered a brief welcome and added, “It is my pleasure 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!” These personable pilots faced the audience in civilian dress, and many people in the audience forgot that they were volunteer test subjects and military officers. Rather, they were a contingent of mature, middle-class Americans, average in build and visage, family men all, college-educated as engineers, possessing excellent health, and professionally committed to flying advanced aircraft.

The reaction was nothing short of an eruption. Applause drowned out the rest of the NASA officials’ remarks. Journalists rose to their feet in a standing ovation. Even the photographers crouched at the foot of the stage rose in acclamation of the Mercury Seven. A wave of excitement circulated through the press conference like no one at NASA had ever seen before. What was all of the excitement about?

The astronauts asked themselves the same question. Slayton nudged Shepard and whispered in his ear, “They’re applauding us like we’ve already done something, like we were heroes or something.” It was clear to all that Project Mercury, the astronauts themselves, and the American space exploration program were destined to be something extraordinary in the nation’s history.

The rest of the press conference was as exuberant as the introduction. At first the newly selected astronauts replied to the press corps’ questions with military stiffness, but led by an effervescent and sentimental John Glenn, they soon warmed to the interviews. What really surprised the astronauts, however, was the nature of the questions most often asked. The reporters did not seem to care about their flying experience, although all had been military test pilots, many had combat experience and decorations for valor, and some held aircraft speed and endurance records. They did not seem to care about the details of NASA’s plans for Project Mercury. What greatly interested them, however, were the personal lives of the astronauts. The media wanted to know if they believed in God and practiced any religion. They wanted to know if they were married and the names and ages and gender of their children, they wanted to know what their families thought about space exploration and their roles in it, and they wanted to know about their devotion to their country. God, country, family, and self, and the virtues inherent in each of them became the theme of the day.

It was thus an odd press conference, with the reporters probing the characters of the pilots. But the motivation was never to dig up dirt on the astronauts, as has so often been the case with the media since, and was certainly something they could have profitably done with these men; instead, it was just the opposite. The reporters wanted confirmation that these seven men embodied the best virtues of the U.S. They wanted to demonstrate to their readers that the Mercury Seven strode Earth as latter-day saviors whose purity coupled with noble deeds would purge this land of the evils of communism by besting the Soviet Union on the world stage. The astronauts did not disappoint.

John Glenn, perhaps intuitively or perhaps through sheer zest and innocence, picked up on the mood of the audience and delivered a ringing sermon on God, country, and family that sent the reporters rushing to their phones for rewrite. He described how Wilbur and Orville Wright had flipped a coin at Kitty Hawk in 1903 to see who would fly the first airplane and how far we had come in only a little more than 50 years. “I think we would be most remiss in our duty,” he said, “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.” The other astronauts fell in behind Glenn and eloquently spoke of their sense of duty and destiny as the first Americans to fly in space. Near the end of the meeting, a reporter asked if they believed they would come back safely from space, and all raised their hands. Glenn raised both of his.

The astronauts emerged as noble champions who would carry the nation’s manifest destiny beyond its shores and into space. James Reston of the New York Times exulted in the astronaut team. He said he felt profoundly moved by the press conference, and even reading the transcript of it made one’s heartbeat a little faster and step a little livelier. “What made them so exciting,” he wrote, “was not that they said anything new but that they said all the old things with such fierce convictions. . . . They spoke of ‘duty’ and ‘faith’ and ‘country’ like Walt Whitman’s pioneers. . . . This is a pretty cynical town, but nobody went away from these young men scoffing at their courage and idealism.”

These statements of values seem to have been totally in character for what was a remarkably homogeneous group. They all embraced a traditional lifestyle that reflected the highest ideals of the American culture. The astronauts also expressed similar feelings about the role of family members in their lives and the effect of the astronaut career on their spouses and children. In a recent study by sociologist Phyllis Johnson, analyzing several Apollo-era astronaut autobiographies, she found that the public nature of what the astronauts did meant that their family and work lives were essentially inseparable, often taking a toll on those involved in the relationship. She concluded:

“The data on these early astronauts need to be interpreted in light of the work-family views of the time: men were expected to keep their work and family lives compartmentalized. Their family life was not supposed to interfere with work life, but it was acceptable for work life to overlap into their family time. In high level professions, such as astronauts, the wife’s support of his career was important; rather than ‘my’ career, it became ‘our’ career. The interaction between work and family is an important aspect of astronaut morale and performance, which has been neglected by researchers.”

The media, reflecting the desires of the American public, depicted the astronauts and their families at every opportunity. The insatiable nature of this desire for intimate details prompted NASA to construct boundaries that both protected the astronauts and projected specific images that reinforced the already present traditional and dominant structure of American society. NASA, for obvious reasons, wanted to portray an image of happily married astronauts, not extramarital scandals or divorce. Gordon Cooper, one of the Mercury Seven, recalled that public image was important to some inside NASA because “marital unhappiness could lead to a pilot making a wrong decision that might cost lives—his own and others.” That might have been part of it, but the Agency’s leadership certainly wanted to ensure that the image of the astronaut as clean-cut, all-American boy did not tarnish.

Sometimes the astronauts caused NASA officials considerable grief, and they sometimes had to rule them with an authoritarian hand. More often, however, they were benevolent and patriarchal toward the astronauts. Often this had to do with what rules they needed to follow and the lack of well-understood guidelines for their ethical conduct. For example, when the Space Task Group moved to Houston in 1962, several local developers offered the astronauts free houses. This caused a furor that reached the White House and prompted the involvement of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. (In this case, the head of the Manned Spacecraft Center, Robert R. Gilruth, had to disallow an outright gift to the astronauts.) Gilruth’s boys also got into trouble over what they could and could not do to make additional money on the outside. NASA had facilitated the Mercury Seven to sell their stories to Life magazine. This had raised a furor, and NASA policies were changed thereafter, but in 1963, Forrest Moore complained to Johnson that the second group of astronauts was seeking to do essentially the same thing. Gilruth had to intervene and explain that any deals for “personal stories” would be worked through the NASA General Counsel and would only take place in a completely open and legal manner. Gilruth also defended the astronauts to the NASA leadership when they accepted tickets to see the Houston Astros season opener baseball game in the new Astrodome in 1965, although he reprimanded several for poor judgment. While he told his superiors that he saw no reason why the astronauts should not enjoy the experience, he ensured that this type of media problem did not repeat itself. He also privately chastised, but publicly defended, John Young over the famous corned beef sandwich episode during Gemini III. He took the licks for these actions from the NASA Administrator:

“If this were a military operation and this kind of flagrant disregard of responsibility and of orders were involved, would not at least a reprimand be put in the record? . . . The only way I know to run a tight ship is to run a tight ship, and I think it essential that you and your associates give the fullest advance consideration to these matters, rather than to have them come up in a form of public criticism which takes a great deal of time to answer and which make the job of all of us more difficult.”

None of this suggests that NASA officials let the astronauts run amuck. They tried to maintain order through more patriarchal means than military ones, but on occasion—as in the case of the Apollo 15 stamp cover sales by the crew—they could be enormously stern. Gilruth later said he tried to keep issues in perspective. These men put their lives on the line and deserved some leniency when minor problems arose. After all, they rose to the challenge repeatedly in conducting Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.

The bravery of the astronauts touched emotions deeply seated in the American experience of the 20th century. Even their close associates at NASA remained in awe of them. The astronauts put a very human face on the grandest technological endeavor in history and the myth of the virtuous, no-nonsense, able, and professional astronaut was born at that moment in 1959. In some respects it was a natural occurrence. The Mercury Seven were, in essence, each of us. None were either aristocratic in bearing or elitist in sentiment. They came from everywhere in the nation, excelled in the public schools, trained at their local state university, served their country in war and peace, married and tried to make lives for themselves and their families, and ultimately rose to their places on the basis of merit. They represented the best the country had to offer and, most importantly, they expressed at every opportunity the virtues ensconced in the democratic principles of the republic. In many ways, the astronauts were the logical focal point of the space program because they were something that regular people could understand. Instead of mathematics, rockets, and acronyms, the astronauts served as an understandable entry point into a mysterious and elite world of science, technology, and exploration. In other words, the astronauts were the single most important element that made the space program something that resonated with the broader populace because of their (constructed to some degree) “everyman” status. They were not part of the technological elites that ran NASA, nor were they mechanical and alien like the machines they flew. They were quite aware of their status as national symbols and hoped to use that status to advance U.S. interests (I-28).

The astronauts worked enormously hard to make Project Mercury a success, undergoing training far from their professional experience (I-21). In December 1959, John Glenn described for a colleague some of the stress and strain of this effort:

“Following our selection in April, we were assigned to the Space Task Group, portion of NASA at Langley Field, and that is where we are based when not traveling. The way it has worked out, we have spent so much time on the road that Langley has amounted to a spot to come back to get clean skivvies and shirts and that’s about all. We have had additional sessions at Wright Field in which we did heat chamber, pressure chamber, and centrifuge work and spent a couple of weeks this fall doing additional centrifuge work up at NADC, Johnsville, Pennsylvania. This was some program since we were running it in a lay-down position similar to that which we will use in the capsule later on and we got up to as high as 16 g’s. That’s a bitch in any attitude, lay-down or not (I-30).”

NASA kept the astronauts enormously busy training for future space missions. As Robert B. Voas of NASA’s Space Task Group reported in May 1960: “The [training] program which has resulted from these considerations has allotted about one-half of the time to group activities and the other half to individually planned activities in each Astronaut’s area of specialization” (I-31).

When they were selected for Project Mercury in 1959, no one fully realized what would be the result of having highly skilled pilots involved in the effort. Originally they had been viewed as minor participants in the flights by engineers developing Project Mercury at NASA’s Langley Research Center in the winter of 1958 to 1959. Numerous skirmishes took place between engineers and astronauts in the development of the Mercury capsule, the “man-rating” of the launch vehicle, and in determining the level of integration of the astronaut into the system. Donald K. Slayton, who early took the lead for the Mercury Seven and later officially headed the astronaut office, emphasized the criticality of astronauts not as passengers but as pilots. In a speech before the Society of Experimental Test Pilots in 1959, he said:

“Objections to the pilot [in space] range from the engineer, who semi-seriously notes that all problems of Mercury would be tremendously simplified if we didn’t have to worry about the bloody astronaut, to the military man who wonders whether a college-trained chimpanzee or the village idiot might not do as well in space as an experienced test pilot . . . I hate to hear anyone contend that present day pilots have no place in the space age and that non-pilots can perform the space mission effectively. If this were true, the aircraft driver could count himself among the dinosaurs not too many years hence.

Not only a pilot, but a highly trained experimental test pilot is desirable . . . as in any scientific endeavor the individual who can collect maximum valid data in minimum time under adverse circumstances is highly desirable. The one group of men highly trained and experienced in operating, observing, and analyzing airborne vehicles is the body of experimental test pilots represented here today. Selection of any one for initial spaceflights who is not qualified to be a member of this organization would be equivalent to selecting a new flying school graduate for the first flight on the B-70, as an example. Too much is involved and the expense is too great.”

Slayton’s defense of the role of the Mercury astronauts has found expression in many places and circumstances since that time.

Notwithstanding arguments to the contrary from some quarters, officials overseeing Project Mercury always intended that the astronauts should have control over the spacecraft that they flew in. Making these devices safe enough for humans took longer and exposed more doubts than NASA had expected and the astronauts themselves aided immensely in moving this integration forward. As the official history of Mercury reported in 1966:

“During the curiously quiet first half of 1960, the flexibility of the Mercury astronaut complemented and speeded the symbiosis of man and missile, of astronaut and capsule. Technology, or hardware, and techniques, or procedures—sometimes called “software” by hardware engineers—both had to be developed. But because they were equally novel, reliability had to be built into the new tools before dexterity could be acquired in their use.”

From the beginning, therefore, Project Mercury managers accepted the integral role of astronauts in controlling the spacecraft.

Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., Chief Flight Director for Mercury, made the case that many in NASA wanted a “go slow” approach to astronaut integration because “at the beginning, the capabilities of Man were not known, so the systems had to be designed to function automatically. But with the addition of Man to the loop, this philosophy changed 180 degrees since primary success of the mission depended on man backing up automatic equipment that could fail.” Kraft and his colleagues came to realize that the astronauts served an exceptionally useful purpose for enhancing the chances of success with Project Mercury. As an example, when the astronauts first visited the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation facilities in May 1959 they reviewed progress of the capsule they would fl y with a sense for the human factors that would be necessary to make it work. They came up with several requests for alterations—including an observation window, manual reentry thruster controls, and an escape hatch with explosive bolts—and based on their recommendations NASA and McDonnell engineers went to work to overcome their concerns.

One incident concerning the astronauts’ desire for changes to the Mercury capsule has entered the public consciousness as a representation of conflicts between the fliers and the engineers. One key alteration the astronauts pressed for was the addition of an observation window for navigational purposes. In the feature film, The Right Stuff, this incident is depicted as a nasty confrontation that required the astronauts to threaten to appeal directly to the public through the media for their changes to be adopted. Only in the face of perceived embarrassment would the NASA and McDonnell engineers back down. This adversarial approach to astronaut involvement made for sparks on the screen, but it bore little resemblance to what actually took place. The design engineers working on the spacecraft were exceptionally concerned about weight, and glass thick enough to withstand the harsh environments of launch, spaceflight, and reentry would weigh quite a lot. As Maxime A. Faget, designer of the Mercury spacecraft, remarked in an interview on 1 February 1991: “When we started off, we thought the Atlas could put about 2,000 pounds into orbit. So our design weight at the initiation of the program was 2,000 pounds. That was our goal. We had to build it at 2,000 pounds, and it was very challenging.” To save weight Faget had only two portholes in the spacecraft and he thought that was good enough, but the astronauts pressed their point and got their navigation window. In the process of this and other changes, the Mercury capsule grew to a weight of about 2,700 pounds. Faget concluded, “Fortunately, as the Atlas was developed, we improved its performance, so it didn’t have any trouble carrying the full weight. I think a great number of changes to the Mercury capsule would not have happened if the Atlas had not been improved.” He added, “The astronauts were involved in the program decisions from the time they came on board. I think it was the right way to do it.”

Edward Jones made his point about human involvement even more succinctly in a paper delivered before the American Rocket Society in November 1959. He suggested that the astronaut was virtually necessary to the successful operation of Mercury missions. He commented:

“Serious discussions have advocated that man should be anesthetized or tranquillized or rendered passive in some other manner in order that he would not interfere with the operation of the vehicle. . . . As equipment becomes available, a more realistic approach evolves. It is now apparent with the Mercury capsule that man, beyond his scientific role, is an essential component who can add considerably to systems effectiveness when he is given adequate instruments, controls, and is trained. Thus an evolution has occurred . . . with increased emphasis now on the positive contribution the astronaut can make.”

The result of these efforts led to the development of a Mercury spacecraft that allowed considerable, but not total, control by the astronaut.