Seems like you've deliberately spun the Mercury 7 in the worst possible light, for whatever reason.
Al Shepard -- Solid Navy test pilot material. Flew the first mission and handled the huge PR gush flawless. But when he was grounded he became a terror running the astronaut office for NASA, and that when he wasn't spending a lot of time pursuing outside business ventures. Used his fame and friendship with Slayton to wangle himself an Apollo mission over younger, healthier astronauts who had more hours in space than him.
Shepard was a tough boss who demanded 110% from the people under him, but considering the importance of the program and the privleges and perks astronauts enjoyed, I'd say holding them to high standards was pretty fair. Despite his reputation as the "icy commander", he liked and respected people who stood up to him (like the astronauts' nurse Dee O'Hara) or reached out to him (like his back-up on Apollo 14, Gene Cernan).
Shepard was cleared by the medical board and perfectly qualified to fly. He'd put in far more time with the program than the "younger, healthier" astronauts you claim he bumped.
Gus Grissom -- Nothing bad can be said about Gus. He was one of the best engineers of the 7 and yet was still killed in the Apollo fire, despite his grumpy insistence on rooting out technical flaws.
Sure sounds to me like you're trying to say something bad about him.
John Glenn -- Perfectly capable astronaut, but his run for president in '84 failed because he wouldn't heed his professional campaign staff. Noted for being arrogant and bullheaded in the Senate.
Noted by whom?
Scott Carpenter -- Run out of the astronaut program for his Mercury landing overshoot. Personally, I think Chris Kraft shafted him but you can't deny that he was drummed out of NASA after one shot.
That one might be largely true.
Wally Schirra -- Maybe the best of them all due to his textbook Mercury and Gemini flights, but was still drummed out of NASA for getting snippy with flight control. Yeah, yeah, he "retired," but Chris Kraft has made it clear that Schirra wasn't going to fly again. Killed Donn Eisle's astronaut career to boot.
He wasn't "drummed out of NASA". He had explicitly announced his retirement BEFORE the flight. He certainly didn't "kill" Donn Eisle's career either. Eisle did that himself being insubordinate with mission control during the flight. He was later assigned to the back-up crew of Apollo 10, but Slayton eventually had to fire him because after his divorce and new marriage, he became distracted and no longer put in the work.
Gordo Cooper -- Lost his Apollo flight due to slacking off or was muscled out of it by Al Shepard, depending on who you believe. Later accounts make it pretty clear that he was not taking his flight prep seriously during Apollo.
Again, that one is somewhat true. Cooper had always had a "strap in and go" attitude. While he got away with this to some extent on Mercury and Gemini, Apollo demanded too much attention to detail.
Deke Slayton -- Famously grounded and turfed over to running to become overall honcho of the astronauts office for NASA. Later used his connections and long tenure at NASA to wangle an Apollo-Soyuz flight that clearly should have gone to one of the younger astronauts.
Again, Slayton was fully fit to take the flight and was still a qualified astronaut. He had put in over fifteen years of service. There was no reason not to assign him to the flight.
Tote it up: three of them were thrown out of the manned spaceflight program for pissing off NASA management; two of them wangled spaceflights out of canny manipulation of the astronaut mafia. And three of them ended up divorced, for what that's worth. Great astronauts? Compared to the Next 9, not really. But their hard-nosed ways served them well, even if it drove their wives bats.
None of them were "thrown out". Two continued to work in it for some time, even when it was less likely they would be assigned to a crew, and third retired voluntarily.
Two of them were physically fit and qualified to fly in the Apollo program, which had always favored experience and seniority.
Yes, three of them ended up divorced, but that was highly common among Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts. It's curious that you would compare them to the "Next 9", because of the seven of them who survived the space program, FIVE of them eventually divorced.
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wab-3
9 years ago
Nope, you're way out to lunch:
--Al Shepard had only one very brief suborbital flight to his credit, compared to the many Gemini and Apollo astronauts who had way more spaceflight experience than him, in particular long-duration flights involving long-term weightlessness, EVA's orbital docking maneuvers, etc. He was much older than the core of the flight-experienced astronaut corps and his flight status was dependent on an experimental operation for a disease whose recurrence in flight could have endangered his Apollo crew mates. Other astronauts were pushed aside or passed over for far less extreme issues. By any objective standard Shepard should have stayed grounded.
--John Glenn's issues as a senator and presidential candidate were widely documented throughout his political career. He himself admitted that he sank his own presidential campaign in part by not being willing to listen to his advisors.
--Chris Kraft himself said that Schirra killed Eisle's astronaut career by inducing him to mouth off with Mission Control. Kraft was not going to let Eisle fly again, period. He was done after Apollo 7, and some sources say that Wally killed Walt Cunningham's career, too. As to whether Wally was going to retire beforehand, we only have his word on that. Kraft wouldn't have let him fly again anyway.
--There was every reason not to assign Deke Slayton a capsule seat for Apollo-Soyyuz. He had NO spaceflight experience and his astronaut "career" was clearly almost over due to age. His seat could have gone to a younger astronaut in the pipeline to fly the Space Shuttle who clearly could have used the spaceflight experience. Instead, that critical spaceflight time was thrown away as a retirement gift for Deke.
--Wally, Gordo and Scott were most definitely thrown out of the astronaut program. Deke and Chris Kraft said exactly that in their memoirs. When you are grounded for incompetency or insubordination, you are effectively thrown out. Being allowed to hang on shuffling papers to earn your retirement is meaningless.
The point remains that, despite the hagiography, the Mercury 7 just weren't the supermen they were made out to be for the media. But they were damned good at working the system for their own benefit.
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t_smitts
9 years ago
-Shepard was barely older than astronauts like Frank Borman, Jim McDivitt, and Jim Lovell, all of whom were assigned Apollo commands. He'd kept up his training and flight proficiency in the intervening years and had been cleared by flight surgeons, who were notorious for erring on the side of caution.
-Documented where? He may have made bad call in his campaign, but that has little bearing on his merit as a senator, let alone as an astronaut.
-Eislie was responsible for his own decision to mouth off to mission control. Schirra's decision to retire has been noted in several books, including the autobiographies of Deke Slayton, Dave Scott, and Gene Cernan.
-Every astronaut starts out with NO spaceflight experience, and there's no guarantee that a younger astronaut would've flown on the shuttle, which was still years away. Many of the rookie Apollo astronauts, for example never flew again. In fact all of the junior crew members on Apollo 13 through 17 were rookies, and of those, only Ken Mattingly of Apollo 16 would fly again. Of the seven rookies who fly Skylab missions, four would never fly again. And as I said before, the astronaut office had always favored seniority, believing that those who had contributed to the program longest had earned priority for choice assignments.
-Deke did NOT say that in his memoirs. In fact, he disputes the kind of authority Kraft claimed to have. Again, Wally had already planned to move on to other things after his Apollo flight, as many of the Apollo commanders did (Borman, McDivitt, Armstrong, Lovell, Shepard, Scott, Cernan). Training for an Apollo mission consumed your life for one to two years and was extremely exhausting, especially as a commander. Add to that fact, they'd been putting in long hours and six day weeks for years by that time. It's not surprising that most of them became burned out and decided they didn't want to fly again.
While the Mercury 7 weren't as perfect as the media of the time made them out to be, they certainly weren't as Machiavellian as you suggest either.
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wab-3
9 years ago
Really, all I need to post to rebut your arguments is "See above" since you're just regurgitating the same arguments I've already disproven with specific citations, but I'll go through this one more time:
-Shepard was barely older than astronauts like Frank Borman, Jim McDivitt, and Jim Lovell, all of whom were assigned Apollo commands. He'd kept up his training and flight proficiency in the intervening years and had been cleared by flight surgeons, who were notorious for erring on the side of caution.
Shepard was substantially older than many of the Apollo astronauts who had already logged serious Gemini flight time. He had been stricken with a very serious disease that caused him to vomit and faint at random, which was clearly a permanently grounding condition. Deke's heart murmur grounding was arguably within the bounds of over-caution on the part of the NASA flight surgeons, but Menieure's disease was clearly a career-killer for an astronaut at that time. There's just no rebuttal to that. Al got his Apollo flight out of pure croneyism.
-Documented where? He may have made bad call in his campaign, but that has little bearing on his merit as a senator, let alone as an astronaut.
Do your own research. Glenn himself has said that he bilged his own presidential campaign. His stubbornness and inability to work collegially with his fellow senators hamstrung his Senate career. This is widely known historical fact.
-Eislie was responsible for his own decision to mouth off to mission control.
Not according to Chris Kraft, whose opinion was the one that mattered. He felt that Wally influenced Eisle and Cunningham into insubordination with Mission Control, thus ending Eisle's career. As to Kraft's influence, history shows that his decisions stuck. He said that Carpenter and the Apollo 7 crew would never fly again, and they didn't. Wally claimed
after the fact that he'd already decided to retire. Well, what was he going to say, that his mouthing off blew his chances for a moon landing mission? Proud men say a lot of ass-covering things after the fact. It was Chris Kraft who effectively threw the three out of Apollo. That's what matters.
-Every astronaut starts out with NO spaceflight experience, and there's no guarantee that a younger astronaut would've flown on the shuttle, which was still years away. Many of the rookie Apollo astronauts, for example never flew again. In fact all of the junior crew members on Apollo 13 through 17 were rookies, and of those, only Ken Mattingly of Apollo 16 would fly again. Of the seven rookies who fly Skylab missions, four would never fly again. And as I said before, the astronaut office had always favored seniority, believing that those who had contributed to the program longest had earned priority for choice assignments.
The shuttle was already being designed in '75 and astronaut staffing was being planned to provision an experienced cadre of Apollo astronauts to fly the first STS missions Deke was never going to go on to STS, so his Apollo-Soyuz seat and the spaceflight experience that went with it was effectively wasted. Arguing this is, frankly, asinine. Deke's flight has always been seen as a wasteful retirement present by NASA historians.
-Deke did NOT say that in his memoirs. In fact, he disputes the kind of authority Kraft claimed to have. Again, Wally had already planned to move on to other things after his Apollo flight, as many of the Apollo commanders did (Borman, McDivitt, Armstrong, Lovell, Shepard, Scott, Cernan). Training for an Apollo mission consumed your life for one to two years and was extremely exhausting, especially as a commander. Add to that fact, they'd been putting in long hours and six day weeks for years by that time. It's not surprising that most of them became burned out and decided they didn't want to fly again.
Deke took personal responsibility for tossing Gordo from Apollo. Says exactly that in his book. He also said that he didn't have a problem with Carpenter being tossed either. As for Kraft, history proves that he had the clout to get Wally grounded. Kraft may have been a tyrannical a-hole, but the historical fact is that his decisions were not countermanded by higher-ranking NASA brass.
While the Mercury 7 weren't as perfect as the media of the time made them out to be, they certainly weren't as Machiavellian as you suggest either.
Yes, they were, specifically Deke and Al. Your quibbles are just sophistry trying to rebut what is now well-proven historical fact.
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boxerrebellion
9 years ago
You know, memoirs are not necessarily fact; even history is not. It is usually told by the victors who are notorious for puffing themselves up, hiding their negatives and putting down anyone that opposed them.
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