FWIW, through episode 2, I think the show presents a more accurate version of the actual astronauts than "The Right Stuff" (the movie, anyway) did. That movie heavily overhyped stuff in the interest of telling a good story, and most of the individual astronauts didn't bear a lot of similarity to the real people, as described in more inside accounts. The only one who's a little odd in the TV show is Grissom, who obviously looks very little like the real guy and is kind of a generic nice guy, personality-wise.
Of course, the TV show's focus is on the wives, so the astronauts play more of a supporting role, but at least they're fairly accurate.
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LindaY
9 years ago
Actually, several of the astronauts hated the book The Right Stuff, especially Gordon Cooper, who hated the fact that Wolfe portrayed him as such a loveable but self-centered goof.
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wab-3
9 years ago
No, they hated the film version. Wolfe didn't single out Cooper as a goof, the film did. The Mercury 7 didn't really have serious issues with Wolfe's book, other than the infidelity stuff, and neither did Chuck Yeager or Scott Crossfield.
There are other, later books that give better details about what happened behind the scenes in the Mercury program, especially Deke Slayton's memoir. He's opinionated to the point of being inaccurate, but it makes for an interesting read.
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johnston.scot
9 years ago
I don't know any of those details (and it's been some years since I read the book), but my recollection was that the movie took a lot more liberties than the book did. The book did rev things up in the interest of making a splashy impression (which is kind of Wolfe's journalistic métier), but the movie raised that by an order of magnitude.
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