Project Mercury Overview - Astronaut Selection

Sir, it's entertaining. But I'm quite critical of it, as were the 7. First, the depiction of Grissom's landing suggests he panicked. As he died prior to the film, he was unable to refute that scene. Schirra proved Grissom couldn't have blown the hatch without significant bruising. I also dislike the film's depiction of those guys as mere stick and rudder jocks. They enjoyed thrills. But they also knew how to use a slide rule and had serious engineering chops. They weren't knuckle draggers. Another issue is the notion that Yeager was somehow robbed because he didn't have college. The decision to require a BS's worth of education was unintentionally fortuitous. Mercury merely intended to get an American in orbit. So it could only change orientation; roll, pitch, & yaw; not direction. All that changed with JFK's lunar challenge. Subsequent astronaut groups had pilots with MS degrees and Aldrin had a PhD. The complexities of orbital rendezvous made college degrees a reasonable prerequisite. Beside, Yeager did well by remaining with the USAF and commanding the test pilot school. Conversely, I've read the 7 actually liked the book.

1SG(P) (Join to see) - thank you for putting your critiques to the movie I just thought it was a weird movie innocence I did not know about Grissom I did know he died in Apollo 1 so yes he did not have a chance to do input. I did read Yeager and Yeager had his hands full as it is and he did finally get his college because he was tutored and finally became a one-star general who could still fly. I appreciate your critiques because I saw the movie a long time ago in high school and then afterwards but I haven't seen it recently since reading the Jager book. Hollywood never seems to get a lot of it right and the scene where they had to masturbate all to Glory Glory Hallelujah was kind of creepy especially with that ugly facial hair nurse looking in. It was not really accurate but still it was giving people that idea how it was. I do like the scene were John Glenn's wife did not want to see President Johnson President Johnson's having a five year old temper tantrum in his limousine. I don't believe the fire from the Aborigines was part of what the astronaut saw in space but still it was at least a reminder of the good times I laughed seeing the Nazi scientists panicking pushing the button worried that the rocket was going to detonate on the LaunchPad instead of going into orbit.