In 1979 Tom Wolfe published a less sanitized version of their story in "The Right Stuff".
(meta data) TITLE: Books: Skywriting with Gus and Deke - TIME ## Time.com MY ACCOUNT SIGN IN SIGN OUT TIME Health The TIME Vault TIME Labs The Goods Press Room The 100 Most Influential People Next Generation Leaders Person of the Year Top of the World Privacy Policy Your California Privacy Rights Terms of Use Ad Choices TIME Apps TIME for Kids Reprints and Permissions Site Map Customer Service © 2019 TIME USA, LLC All rights reserved. Sign InSubscribe # Books: Skywriting with Gus and Deke R.Z. Sheppard Monday, Sept. 24, 1979 Follow @TIME THE RIGHT STUFF by Tom Wolfe; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 436 pages; $12.95 May 5, 1961: the day Alan Shepard scratched his back on the edge of space and America entered the manned space race. At last. Since 1957 there had been all those Sputniks—Mechtas and Vostoks—beeping overhead, clockwork reminders that the heavens were in the hands of the godless Bolshevik. The script had gone awry. A nation only 40 years from feudalism was secretly lobbing what looked like customized samovars at the free world while priapic Vanguards and Jupiters wilted on their pads or exploded prematurely for all the world to see. Democracy could be embarrassing. The oaken voice of Walter Cronkite echoes in the memory of America's entry into the competition There were resonant suspense at lift-offs and tremolos of pride at splashdowns: America still had the right stuff, Wolfe's buzz word for the indefinable attributes of the astronauts. His long awaited book about test pilots and the Mercury flights recalls those years through the eyes and nerve endings of the first astronauts, their wives and even the conditioned chimpanzees who rode prototype capsules downrange from Cape Canaveral: The chimp's &"heart rate shot up as he strained against the force, but he didn't panic for a moment. He had been through this same sensation many times on the centrifuge As long as he just took it and didn't struggle, they wouldn't zap all those goddamned blue bolts into the soles of his feet. There were a lot worse things in this world than g-forces ... The main thing was to keep ahead of those blue bolts in the feet!... He started pushing the buttons and throwing the switches like the greatest electric Wurlitzer organist who ever lived..." The jazzy mix of facts and fictional technique, Céline's ellipses, the gadzooks delivery and a presumptuous ape's-eye view that would have curled Henry James' worsteds—these are unmistakable parts of Wolfe's style It is still called the New Journalism, although the form is as old as the Beatles and the author is now 48. Like the Beatles, Wolfe has had a revolutionary impact on his field. His imitators have spread like dandelion fluff, and his work still stirs furious debate. Yet even the creakiest practitioner of the inverted-pyramid style of journalism will have to agree that behind the mannered realism of The Right Stuff thumps the heart of a traditionalist. The organizing principle of the book is an old-fashioned fascination with, and admiration for, the test pilots and fighter jocks of the U.S.'s first astronaut team: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. In addition, the book has a superhero, Chuck Yeager, a World War II combat veteran who broke the sound barrier in 1947 and rewrote aviation history in experimental rocket-powered planes of the '50s and early '60s. Previous Page Next Page
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Mercury Seven
Influence.

 Shepard ran the Astronaut Office on a "rank has its privileges" basis. The Mercury and 1962 astronauts had their own allocated parking spaces outside Building 4 at Johnson Space Center, while astronauts from later groups had to compete for the remaining spaces allotted to astronauts. While Shepard prohibited junior astronauts from receiving gifts and consulting or teaching part-time, he remained vice president and part owner of the Baytown National Bank in Houston, and devoted much of his time to it. 
 Training was always ungraded; the Mercury astronauts had nothing to gain and much to lose from being objectively compared to the newer classes, as it could threaten their privileged status, managerial control, and priority for flight assignments. The astronaut's attendance at their training events was voluntary. The character of the Astronaut Office would only change after Mercury astronauts retired in the 1970s, and control passed to George Abbey. 
 The Mercury Seven wrote first-hand accounts of their selection and preparation for the Mercury missions in the 1962 book "We Seven".