Mercury Seven Had the Right Stuff
Good morning. It’s April 9. On this date in 1959, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration introduced America’s first astronauts to the media. Hand-picked out of 32 highly qualified candidates, these men were chosen because leaders of the new agency believed they had the mental makeup of Jackie Robinson and the flying ability of Chuck Yeager.
The original seven - Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., and Donald “Deke” Slayton – were not only military test pilots. They were the cream of a very rich crop.
Their task? To get Project Mercury, America's first manned space program, off the ground. NASA announced that day that it planned to begin manned orbital flights in 1961.
Of the original seven Mercury astronauts, only Scott Carpenter and John Glenn are still with us. Gordon Cooper remained in the Air Force until 1970, and passed away in 2004. Wally Schirra, a Marine Corps combat pilot in Korea, was the one who oversaw the redesign of the Apollo capsule that incinerated Gus Grissom and two other astronauts in 1967. Wally died in 2007.
World War II pilot Deke Slayton left us in 1993; Alan Shepard, the first American in space, in 1998. Here’s to all of them, as well as those who came later.
John Glenn, who went on to become a U.S. senator and presidential candidate, returned to space aboard the Discovery in 1998. The space shuttle program is not with us anymore, but as John F. Kennedy suggested in his famous 1962 speech at Rice University, discovery (if not the Discovery) will always be part of our national makeup.
“Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it?” Kennedy said that day. “He said, ‘Because it is there.’
“Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”
