46 pages • 1 hour read
Tom WolfeThe Right Stuff
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Righteous Prayer”
Chapter 10 provides a detailed, almost moment-by-moment account of Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight on May 5, 1961, that makes him the first American in space.
The chapter opens with Shepard strapped into the tiny Mercury capsule atop the Redstone rocket that will propel him into suborbital space. After 120 simulations of the flight, Shepard is experiencing something new: He has to urinate (191). He has been waiting in the capsule for over four hours while NASA technicians overcome a series of delays in the launch (195). Urine could damage some of the instruments in Shepard’s space suit and potentially alter conditions in the capsule. After a cancellation on May 2 due to bad weather, Shepard is determined not to jeopardize the launch by releasing his bladder (192). “For a test pilot,” Wolfe elaborates, “the right stuff in the prayer department was not ‘Please, God, don’t let me blow up.’ No, the supplication at such a moment was ‘Please, dear God, don’t let me fuck it up’” (195-96). Eventually NASA gives Shepard permission to urinate in his spacesuit, and no adverse consequences result (199).
With everything on the ground finally under control, Shepard lifts off. Wolfe cuts away to his wife, Louise, who is watching the launch on television at their home in Virginia Beach (201-04). In the face of droves of media representatives waiting outside her door, Louise remains unflappable.
Wolfe switches back to Shepard and painstakingly describes the progress of his roughly 15-minute flight into suborbital space. Wolfe calls the entire affair a “precreated experience” (205). Shepard has simulated every aspect of the flight over 100 times; each change in velocity, position, and g-force that he undergoes in the capsule is already familiar to him. In fact, several stages of the flight, such as the transition to weightlessness, are described as easier than in the simulations (205-07). Despite some minor hiccups—he falls behind on the checklist of control panel inputs that he has been instructed to perform (211)—the capsule successfully lands in the Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda, and Shepard is quickly brought to the aircraft carrier Lake Champlain to greet its jubilant crew (212-13).
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Unscrewable Pooch”
Chapter 11 outlines the aftermath of Shepard’s successful mission, the first trip to suborbital space by an American astronaut, as well as the second Mercury flight by Gus Grissom.
Wolfe describes NASA’s complete change in fortune after Shepard’s flight. The astronaut is feted with parades in Washington, DC, New York, and his hometown of Derry, New Hampshire (214-15). Shepard has realized the immense public expectations placed on Project Mercury; he is an American hero.
After the foreign policy disaster of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy is eager to capitalize on the popularity of NASA and the Mercury Seven (216-17). He tells the top NASA administrators that he will announce that the United States will land an astronaut on the moon by 1970. This begins a period of “budgetless financing” for NASA; there are no limitations on what the organization can request to achieve its goals (218).
The second half of the chapter shifts to Grissom’s flight on July 21, 1961. He is the first of the Mercury astronauts to use the redesigned flight capsule, which sports features like a window and hand controls that make the experience closer to piloting (220). Like Shepard, Grissom has a successful suborbital flight, but a major problem occurs upon his landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The exit hatch is ejected from the capsule prematurely, and Grissom struggles to tread water under the weight of his spacesuit as rescue helicopters slowly close in (225-31). The capsule itself sinks into the ocean, the important flight data that it contains lost to NASA.
Shaken from nearly drowning, Grissom insists that the exit hatch malfunctioned and that he did not hit the button before he was supposed to. This explanation is met with skepticism: “it was obvious to everybody at Edwards that Grissom had just fucked it, screwed the pooch, that was all” (231). Although he does not receive the same acclaim that Shepard did after his flight, Grissom is nevertheless absolved of any serious wrongdoing by NASA and public opinion (232-33). By contrast, his wife Betty perceives the relative lack of approbation from NASA and the government to be a severe affront to her and her husband (233-37).
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Tears”
Chapter 12 discusses the third manned Mercury flight, completed by John Glenn on February 20, 1962. Unlike Shepard and Grissom, Glenn reaches orbital space and circumnavigates the Earth three times during his nearly five-hour flight.
The chapter opens with yet another surprise missive from the Soviet space program. On August 6, 1961, just 16 days after Grissom’s flight, cosmonaut Gherman Titov completes 17 full orbits of the Earth over a 24-hour period (238). Despite the recent successes of Project Mercury, there remains a significant “space gap” between the United States and Russia (239). On the other hand, the X-15 flights at Edwards continue to progress: Bob White reaches speeds and altitudes comparable to Shepard and Grissom’s suborbital flights in a piloted aircraft (240-41).
In the wake of Titov’s flight, NASA decides to suspend flights with the old Redstone rocket in favor of the more powerful Atlas model (239). This will allow an American astronaut to reach orbital space like Gagarin and Titov. John Glenn, the next of the Seven in line for a Mercury mission, is chosen as the lead pilot.
After a successful test with chimpanzee Number 85, or Enos, the stage is set for the first Mercury-Atlas flight (241-45). Following weather delays in December and January, Glenn’s flight finally occurs on February 20, 1962 (245-52). Wolfe describes the course of Glenn’s flight in great detail (252-75). Despite some uncertainties about the condition of the heat shield designed to protect him upon reentry into the atmosphere, Glenn successfully completes three orbits of the Earth and returns safely.
To the surprise of the other astronauts, the public response to Glenn’s flight far exceeds that of Shepard’s. Like Yeager before him, Glenn has risen to the very top of the pyramid of the pilot brotherhood by making the first orbital spaceflight in American history (276). Besides a visit to the White House, Glenn gives an address to Congress that draws tears from his audience (277-78) and heads a massive celebratory parade in New York City (278-81). Wolfe describes the emotions unleashed by Glenn’s flight as nothing less than “the greatest surge of patriotism since the Second World War” (280). “That was what the sight of John Glenn did to Americans at that time,” writes Wolfe. “It primed them for tears. And those tears ran like a river all over America” (282).
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
In Chapters 10-12 Wolfe describes the first three manned Mercury flights that occur between May 1961 and February 1962. The astronauts involved are Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn. Though not equally acclaimed, the three flights collectively restore faith in NASA and ignite the race to land a human being on the moon.
Large portions of these chapters consist of detailed narrations of the astronauts’ experiences while in flight, particularly from Shepard and Glenn. For Shepard and Glenn, the affair constitutes what Wolfe calls a “precreated experience” (205). Every change in sensation, every movement of the capsule, and every flip of a switch on the control panel is programmed into the astronauts through hours and hours of exhaustive training and simulation. Like the test chimpanzees that precede them, the astronauts are conditioned to respond to the experience of spaceflight in a perfectly predictable manner designed to eliminate all error and spontaneity. As the Seven learn, an astronaut’s performance is less about piloting skills than “how well you covered the items on your checklist” of duties during flight (221). This has always been clear to the “True Brothers” at Edwards who continue to engage in actual piloting during test flight (231).
The departure from procedure represented by the premature ejection of the escape hatch during Grissom’s flight is thus the ultimate failure in the context of Project Mercury. Despite the apparent setback of the Grissom flight, Wolfe is clear that the magical aura surrounding the astronauts remains intact. “[T]he possibility that Gus might have blundered was never brought up again. Far from having a tarnished record, he was a hero” (233). The mythological power of the astronaut, single combatant against the great Soviet space machine, is impervious to minor missteps like the Grissom situation.
The miraculous figure of the astronaut and his importance to the American public reaches a new level with Glenn’s flight, the first to orbit the Earth. For Wolfe, this is encapsulated by the moment Glenn wipes away a tear upon his return to Cape Canaveral following his flight (277). Every American is similarly moved by his achievement; Wolfe catalogues the tear-wiping of others who encounter Glenn afterwards, including members of Congress (277-78), throngs of flag-waving onlookers during the massive New York City parade (278-81), even the father of the president, the aged Joseph Kennedy (281-82).
In the span of a few years, the Mercury Seven have arrested the attentions and emotions of an entire nation. This is, for Wolfe, is the power of “the right stuff, the same vital force of manhood that had made millions vibrate and resonate thirty-five years before to [Charles] Lindbergh,” who is famous for making the first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927 (279-80). This is the only comparable event in American history, and Wolfe is clear that the context of Cold War competition amplifies the achievements of the astronauts well beyond those of Lindbergh (or, for that matter, Yeager). “It was an extraordinary thing,” he writes, “being the sort of mortal who brought tears to other men’s eyes” (282).
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