The Right Stuff

by Tom Wolfe

  That became the verdict on Schirra’s performance: “A textbook flight.” He had done everything on the checklist. He had turned in a hundred percent performance. He had successfully proved that a man could ride around the earth six times and barely turn a hand or move a muscle and hardly use an ounce of fuel or expend an extra heartbeat and never, not for a moment, surrender to psychological stress, and ride the ship down to a designated drop in the vastness of the ocean. Sigma, summa, Q.E.D.: Operational!

  Wally came back to celebrations in Houston and Florida and a big Wally Schirra day in his hometown of Oradell, New Jersey. The next day he went to the White House for congratulations by President Kennedy, and the President presented him with the Distinguished Service Medal. It all turned out to be rather brief and unceremonious, however, and something of a disappointment. A little chat, a few grins, a few photographs with the Chief Executive in the Oval Office, and that was it. The date was October 16. In time Wally would learn that Kennedy had just seen photographic evidence, from U-2 flights, that the Soviets had set up missile bases in Cuba. The President had kept his appointment with the astronaut only to maintain appearances, to prevent word from getting out about the critical situation that was developing.

  XIV.

  The Club

  By and by Conrad started carrying Glenn’s bag, as well as his own, and facing up to the role. It was the only sensible thing to do. Otherwise, the two of them would arrive at some airport, St. Louis, Akron, Los Angeles, wherever, and it would take them five minutes to walk forty feet. The autograph seekers came in waves. Every few steps Glenn would have to put his bag down and sign some more autographs and shake some more hands. Actually he was great at it. That big sunny freckle-faced smile of his lit up the place. People came up to him as if they knew him personally and loved him. He is my protector. He risked his life and challenged the Russians in the heavens for me. They adored him so much it would have been hard for him to brush past them, even had he been of that sort of disposition. So he would put his bag down and sign some more autographs, and the two of them would have to stop.

  If Conrad carried both bags, they could keep moving. Glenn could wave and sign autographs and shake hands and chat and beam that terrific smile at everybody in transit without seeming rude. As for Conrad, he was in absolutely no danger of having to stop and put down the bags. He was now an astronaut, officially, but not to the mobs of autograph seekers. They couldn’t have cared less. He looked like some little guy who carried bags for John Glenn. What was more, that was what he felt like. That was about all the second group of astronauts was doing: chores for the first, for the one, the only, the Original Seven. Conrad, as part of his training, had been accompanying Glenn in his travels. Now that Project Mercury was drawing to a close, Glenn was supposed to make Project Apollo, the moon program, his “area of specialization.” He was visiting the factories of the major contractors, just as he had in the early days of Mercury. Conrad’s area of specialization, officially, was “cockpit layout and systems integration”; but mainly he was … with John Glenn. John Glenn visiting the factory took on the aura of the general coming to inspect the troops. He was a magnet for every sort of VIP who could get next to him, particularly congressmen and senators. There were times when senators actually pushed—elbowed! hipped! bellied!—secretaries, stenographers, and other mere gawkers out of the way to get next to Glenn’s fabled hide and speak to him and grin a great deal. Standing by, all the while, would be an unknown young man, the single-combat hero’s valet, apparently, his batman, as the British Army called military servants. Namely, the anonymous Lieutenant Conrad, Group II Astronaut.

  Nevertheless, Conrad had made it this time, and that was the main thing. That was all that any really competitive military pilot upon the great ziggurat could focus on anymore: becoming an astronaut. By now, only three years later, any such session as he and Wally Schirra and Alan Shepard and Jim Lovell and the others had gone through at the Marriott motel in February of 1959 … it was hard to believe it could have ever taken place. Remember Wally that night? Wally! … adding up the pros and cons and agonizing over what the space program might do to his chances of commanding a squadron of F-4Hs! And now Wally—the same Wally with whom they had gone waterskiing on Chesapeake Bay, with whom they had weathered that bad string at Pax River, the old affable prankster himself—now Wally stood at the very apex of the great invisible pyramid of flying. For the seven Mercury astronauts had become the True Brotherhood. They were so dazzling you couldn’t even see the erstwhile True Brethren of Edwards Air Force Base any longer.

  In April, when NASA announced it was accepting applications for a second group of astronauts, both Conrad and Jim Lovell had looked like good bets this time around, since they had been among the thirty-one finalists in the original selection process. Conrad was stationed at Miramar, California, requalifying for a phase of the Navy fighter jock’s training he had already been through, which was night carrier landings. There was a good reason why night carrier landings required requalifying time; even, as in Conrad’s case, after training as a test pilot at Patuxent. Night landings were a routine part of carrier operations—and perhaps the best of all examples of how a man’s accumulated good works did him no good whatsoever at each new step up the great pyramid, of how each new step was an absolute test, and of how each bright new day’s absolutes—chosen or damned—were built into the routine. By 1962 the Navy had already shifted over to light-beam systems using angled mirrors and Fresnel lenses at the end of the flight deck. Conrad and the rest of them going through night carrier training at Miramar did not have to depend on a landing-signal officer standing at the end of the deck in a luminescent orange suit waving a pair of luminescent orange wigwag flags. At night—to the pilot way up there in the dark—there was now a blob of light, known as the meatball, rising and falling on a dimly perceived little slab in the middle of the ocean. The shining blob, the motherless meatball, was rising and falling because the heaving greasy skillet did not stop wallowing in the waves simply out of respect for the night. The carrier was plowing on away from you, into the wind, and therefore into the waves, and therefore was pitching up and down—five, eight, even ten feet at a gulp. On a night when the clouds were low and the moon was obscured, when the sky was black, the ocean was black, and the deck was black, the little meatball (no more than an inch high from up there) and the lights on the ship were like a single low-wattage comet, dim and lurching through the vast blackness of the universe, and the pilot was expected to have the will, the moxie, the illustrious, the all-illuminating stuff to bring a five- or ten-ton jet fighter onto that dim drunken astral plate at 125 knots. In training he had a limited number of passes down the invisible glide path. If he couldn’t bring himself to make contact with the deck for so long that his fuel ran low, then the word bingo! sounded over his earphones, and he had to return to land, to the training base, where the landing strip didn’t move when you approached it … and where everybody on the flight line would know that another poor sad bingo was coming into a safe haven, having funked it in the business of night carrier landings. A persistent case of the bingos was enough to wash a man out of night carrier landings. That did not mean you were finished as a Navy pilot. It merely meant that you were finished so far as carrier ops were concerned, which meant that you were finished so far as combat was concerned, which meant you were no longer in the competition, no longer ascending the pyramid, no longer qualified for the company of those with the right stuff. To have every recommendation in the book as a test pilot, to have survived bad strings galore, meant nothing when such a thing happened. Chosen or damned! (It could blow at any seam.) There were nights when that little meatball way down yonder on the deck was jumping around like the silver BBs in those maddening games you hold in the palm of your hand, and a pilot would have to drive his F–4, a big fifteen-ton brute, down onto the deck through sheer willpower, drive it down practically like a nail. Anything—even the Great Kaboom!—was better than hearin
g bingo over your earphones. To bingo out of a carrier landing after eight years of military flying, after completing test-pilot school at Pax River, after becoming the top of the breed … now, there you had something unthinkable.

  Conrad had just requalified for night carrier landings, for “all-weather carrier operations,” meaning that he was now fully qualified for Navy air combat, when he received his invitation to apply for astronaut. The fact that there was nothing in the role of astronaut that would require one-tenth the piloting skill of night carrier landings did not deter Conrad, Lovell, or anyone else for a second this time around. This time Conrad went through the selection process like Lt. Straight Arrow. As before, there were thirty-odd finalists. They did not have to go through the Lovelace Clinic or the Wright-Patterson Aeromedical Center, however. Instead, they were sent to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, the Air Force’s medical center, for a set of physicals that were time-consuming but on the whole conventional. After five Mercury flights it was obvious that no extraordinary physical hardiness was required for the job.

  For the last phase of the testing they took you straight to Olympus, which was now Houston. Part of the testing was a formal interview, across a table, with NASA engineers, plus Deke Slayton, John Glenn, and Al Shepard, concerning technical matters. But part of it seemed to be social. You were expected to go to a cocktail party and a dinner in a private dining room in the Rice Hotel in Houston, with the Mercury astronauts in attendance. Al Shepard was there for a while, and Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter … and here was Wally. You kept your brain dialed up in all sectors, trying to strike the perfect middle ground between being a good righteous beer-call buddy and showing a good sober respect for the eminence of those already in the club. Maybe I better hold it down to just one drink. It was like a rush party in a fraternity you desperately wanted to belong to.

  Naturally Wally talked to Conrad and Jim Lovell as if he were the same old Wally, comrade-in-arms, good old Wally of Group 20. Nevertheless, the difference in their ranks existed in that room like a ray of light which beamed straight upon Walter Schirra, outstandingly successful single-combat warrior; for there were now the seven Mercury astronauts up there at the apex … and all the rest of the pilots in America far below.

  Not that the Original Seven’s national eminence altered the true and secret nature of things, however. The self-esteem of the fighter jock knew no limits, and the members of Group II were no exceptions to this rule. As soon as they were selected, the boys began looking around and comparing themselves—the Next Nine—with the Original Seven. Here was Neil Armstrong, who had flown the X–15. (What Mercury astronaut had done anything like that?) Here was John Young, who held two world speed-to-climb records. (What Mercury astronaut, other than Glenn, could claim any such distinction?) Here were Frank Borman, Tom Stafford, and Jim McDivitt, who had been flight test instructors at Edwards. (What Mercury astronaut had ever qualified for that, except for Slayton?) The Next Nine were really rolling now. The Original Seven were chosen to withstand stress, period. Look at Carpenter! Look at Cooper! Oh, the Next Nine felt very good about themselves. Nevertheless, the exalted status of the Original Seven was a fact. Once the initial euphoria of being chosen as an astronaut had subsided, Conrad and the others realized that now, for all their righteous stuff, they occupied a somewhat humiliating position in the corps of astronauts. They were like plebes, rookies, fraternity pledges. Gus Grissom had a nice grim ingratiating gruff gus way of telling them—if their paths had to cross here and there—not to get big ideas, not to go around calling themselves astronauts. “You’re not an astronaut,” he would say, “you’re a trainee. You’re not an astronaut until you go up.” He said it without a trace of a smile. The Next Nine spent their time going to classes, like nine freshmen, like nine primary flight training candidates at Pensacola, which was bad enough, and doing scutwork for the Holy Seven, which was worse.

  That was how Conrad had ended up being John Glenn’s go-fer and carrying his bags. It could get cold as hell here on Olympus. There were levels upon levels, even here at the top. At the very apex there was John Glenn, and there were others among the Original Seven themselves who could not get over that fact. At the very first press conference, the one introducing the Next Nine to the public, the Original Seven were on hand, and Shorty Powers happened to introduce them in the reverse order of their flights. When he got to Shepard, he said: “And finally, this is Alan Shepard, the man who’s been saying for years, ‘But I was first!’” Well, that just cracked the place up. Everyone was laughing, with the single and obvious exception of Smilin’Al. He didn’t even move a lip. If slow burns gave off needle rays, Shorty Powers would have had two small green holes through his frontal lobes. And you realized all at once that after Glenn’s great orbital triumph Shepard—the prime pilot, the first American in space—must have felt like a forgotten man. Nobody ranked with Glenn, however, not even Webb, the administrator of NASA.

  One day Glenn dropped by Webb’s office in Washington and informed him that there was going to be a change in his personal agenda. He was going to make no more trips for NASA at the request of this or that congressman or senator. He was no longer going to fly halfway across the country, nor would he walk across the street, to stand on a platform to please some congressman who was looking for votes or whatever else. Glenn didn’t put it as a request. He was letting Webb know how it was going to be from now on. He was just laying down the law. There was no way for Webb to take it except as a direct contradiction of his authority. Webb answered in a reasonable, if somewhat aroused, manner. Now, listen, John, we don’t send you anywhere because some congressman wants you to be there. We send you because NASA wants you to be there. Congressional support is absolutely essential at this point, and this is one of the most important things you could possibly do for the program. To which Glenn says that nevertheless, he is taking no more such trips. Webb’s color begins to rise, and he says that if he is instructed to carry out such duties, then he will be obliged to carry them out. To which Glenn says that Webb happens to be mistaken; he will do no such thing. All at once it’s practically a shouting match.

  Webb didn’t push the situation to the brink. He just let the storm wear itself out; and when it was over, it was obvious that the Administrator of NASA was not a chief so long as John Glenn was in the room. Glenn did not back down or apologize. Far from it; he made it obvious who held the cards around here, and that was that.

  It was John Glenn who had realized from the first that Project Mercury was like a new branch of the armed services, despite its civilian coloration. It would have simplified matters tremendously if NASA had given everybody formal rankings and had done with it. That way people such as Webb would have known where they actually stood. The seven Mercury astronauts could have been designated Single-Combat General, a category with the honors and privileges of five-star general but with none of the duties and obligations of command. After his flight John Glenn, then, would have been promoted to Galactic Single-Combat General, a category ranking slightly above the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Services and slightly below the Commander-in-Chief. Webb, as NASA administrator, would have been a two-star general and would have known the protocol for dealing with GSC General Glenn. Newly inducted astronauts, such as Conrad, Lovell, and Young, could have been ranked as majors, with rapid promotion promised in the event of the successful completion of flights.

  It would have greatly simplified matters for the wives as well. For as much as they would have denied it, had anyone confronted them with the topic, many of the wives of the Original Seven reacted to the arrival of the Next Nine and their wives … precisely like service wives since time was. The classic and often-told story of service wives concerned the wives of a group of Navy pilots who had just been transferred to a new base. A commander designated to give the wives an orientation lecture says: “First, would you ladies please rearrange yourselves by rank, with the highest-ranking wives sitting in the first row and so on back to the rear
.” It takes about fifteen minutes for the women to sort themselves out and change their seats, since very few of them know one another. Once the process has been completed, the commander fixes a stern glare upon them and says: “Ladies, I want you to know that I have just witnessed the most ridiculous performance I have ever seen in my entire military career. Allow me to inform you that no matter who your husbands are, you have no rank whatsoever. You are all equals, and you should kindly remember to conduct yourselves as such in all dealings with one another.” That was not the end of the story, however. The wives stared back at their instructor with looks of utter bemusement and, as if with a single mind, said to themselves: “Who is this idiot and what planet has he been stationed on?” For the inexpressible provisions of the Military Wife’s Compact were well known to all. A military officer’s wife rose in rank with her husband and immediately took on all the honors and perquisites pertaining thereto, and only a fool or the sort of simple-minded jerk who was assigned to give orientation lectures to wives could fail to comprehend this.