There were psychologists who advised against using pilots at all—and this was more than a year after the famous Mercury Seven had been chosen. The pilot’s, particularly the hot pilot’s, main psychological bulwark under stress was his knowledge that he controlled the ship and could always do something (“I’ve tried A! I’ve tried B! I’ve tried C!” …). This obsession with active control, it was argued, would only tend to cause problems on Mercury flights. What was required was a man whose main talent was for doing nothing under stress.
