NASA Astronauts and U.S. Culture (2019)

I wish we could come together that same way. In 1959, NASA unveiled its inaugural class of astronauts, dubbed the Mercury 7, after a rigorous selection process. From all of the active duty pilots in the Navy, Marines and Air Force, the service records of 473 test pilots were selected for review. 110 met the basic qualifications. Each must be... These early astronauts were cut from the same cloth. They were all white, middle class, family men, which many at the time considered to be the touchstones of American virtue. In addition to being these exceptional individuals, they are our knights in shining armor. They are our representatives.

They are us, in other words, in this Cold War environment and rivalry with the Soviet Union. That's former NASA chief historian Roger Lanius. He says while these astronauts looked like snapshots of the, quote, ordinary American, major sections of the population were left out of that frame. They were often the first generation in their family to attend college. Many of them went to school after World War II on the GI Bill or to the service academies. They were all married. They had children. So in terms of sort of mainstream society in 1959, 1960, the early 1960s, they were a representation of all of us. With obviously the notable exception of there weren't any women, there weren't any minorities, and that was a major hole in the effort. Was any thought given to going beyond that kind of white male, middle class seeming person? I understand that they were selected from the military and that obviously limited the

number of people they might choose. But was there any discussion of thinking outside the box on this one? Oh, absolutely. I mean, there was lots of discussion. I mean, before the first astronauts were selected, there was some talk about who would be the best in terms of handling small, tight, cramped spaces. Maybe submarine officers would be better. There was acrobatic skills that might be necessary. Maybe somebody from a circus would be good who does high wire acts or something. So a lot of those sorts of things were considered and immediately rejected. The one area that was considered in a more serious way but didn't get anywhere at the time was the issue of women. There were very fine pilots and some of them were taken to the Lovelace Clinic on a private endeavor to test and see how they would perform in the same environment that the astronauts had been tested on.

Then they found that many of them were quite good at doing the same things the astronauts were called upon. Some of those women really did believe that they were going to become astronauts and the so-called Mercury 13, 13 women who did as well as the males did in those tests, sort of became a cadre and became a public force up to the point where there was actually hearings in Congress about whether or not NASA should have women astronauts. But in the end, they did not do that. To the discredit of NASA, they stood up and said, we do not want to do this. They sent John Glenn up to Capitol Hill and he testified how this would be inappropriate. Later he recanted that and said, you know, I was wrong but it was a different time and place. And the result was there were no women that entered the American Astronaut Corps until 1978.

Well, they did select all white men as far as I know. How were they portrayed by the press? You know, it is fascinating to watch. I mean, everybody sort of fawns over these individuals. And when they unveiled the first astronauts in 1959, the seven of them were setting up behind a table and they began to, you know, announce their names and all of the people in the room, and this is a press conference, so they're mostly sort of hard-boiled reporters and television news people and they stand up and cheer. And that in itself is pretty remarkable. In fact, there's a famous exchange between Deke Slayton and Alan Shepard in which one of them leans over to the other and says, can you believe this? We haven't even done anything yet. And that's sort of true. But I think it does kind of get back to this sort of sense that these are our avatars for this rivalry with the Soviet Union in space and we're going to be supportive of them.

So you talked about the reaction of the press corps to the astronauts. How quickly did the astronauts become American heroes? Almost immediately. James Reston, who was a newspaper reporter for the New York Times at the time, was at the unveiling of the first astronauts and he wrote in his story about that event, he said, you know, he says, most of us are pretty, you know, hard-headed when it comes to looking at these big events. But when you see these individuals and their boyish charm, their good looks, their contagious enthusiasm for what they're doing, you've got to feel good about it. And in that sense, you know, they won over everybody. And those stories that were put out in the newspapers, done on the evening news, wherever, really did bring to the attention of the public the best things about these astronauts.

Mostly they ignored the bad things. And it wasn't until years later that those sort of came out. Yeah. And just to underscore what an incredibly popular phenomenon this was, I remember, you know, writing to NASA during the 1960s and making suggestions. And as everybody in my family can tell you, I don't know how to turn on my vacuum cleaner. But you know, this is just something that a lot of people in the country got behind and felt a part of. Yeah. And it's hard not to sort of feel a part of this when it's sort of on the news on a regular basis. And it's, at the time of a launch, for instance, there would be sort of a pause in the day where everybody would sort of watch it on television. When I was in school, they rolled TVs into, usually it was the lunchroom, which was the

one place they could get us all into, and we'd watch these launches on TV. But it became a part of our lives in ways maybe NASA has not been since that time. The other thing I'd like to say about this is that in the 1960s, there were all of these weekly news magazines. And my parents subscribed to, I think, three or four of them. And you know, Time and Newsweek and the Saturday Evening Post and Life and Look and so on were all magazines that were popular during the time. And Life Magazine especially made a big deal out of the astronauts. In fact, they paid a million dollars that went to NASA for the privilege of writing the personal stories of each of the astronauts in their magazines. And that million dollars then was held in escrow to be paid out in case something happened to the astronauts.

It was sort of a life insurance policy.