The Right Stuff

by Tom Wolfe

No more manned spaceflights were scheduled until the start of the Gemini program in 1965. By then the seven Mercury astronauts would begin to feel a change in the public attitude toward them and, for that matter, toward the Next Nine and the groups of astronauts that were to follow. They would feel the change, but they would not be able to put it into words. What was that feeling? Why, it was the gentle slither of the mantle of soldierly glory sliding off one’s shoulders!—and the cooling effect of oceans of tears drying up! The single-combat warriors’ war had been removed. They would continue to be honored, and men would continue to be awed by their courage; but the day when an astronaut could parade up Broadway while traffic policemen wept in the intersections was no more. Never again would an astronaut be perceived as a protector of the people, risking his life to do battle in the heavens. Not even the first American to walk on the moon would ever know the outpouring of a people’s most primal emotions that Shepard, Cooper, and, above all, Glenn had known. The era of America’s first single-combat warriors had come, and it had gone, perhaps never to be relived. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. The mantle of Cold Warrior of the Heavens had been placed on their shoulders one April day in 1959 without their asking for it or having anything to do with it or even knowing it. And now it would be taken away, without their knowing that, either, and because of nothing the...