unhistorical: April 9, 1959: NASA selects the “Mercury Seven”. Two years after the Sovie
unhistorical: April 9, 1959: NASA selects the “Mercury Seven”. Two years after the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, and the Space Race along with it, NASA chose from an elite pool of candidates America’s first astronauts, now members of a group known collectively as “the Mercury Seven”. The competition between the two nations during the early years of the Space Race moved at breakneck speed - Sputnik was launched in late 1957; the United States launched Explorer 1 three months later in January of 1958; NASA was formed five months after that; and by the end of the year the agency had set up Project Mercury and begun the search process for its first astronauts. This search process was, initially, fairly general. Candidates had to be male, under six feet and 180 pounds (size was critical in performing human spaceflight), a bachelor’s decree, and flight experience and qualifications. 110 applicants met all these qualifications, and dozens were further eliminated through strenuous physical and mental tests until eighteen remained, and of those eighteen seven men from three branches of the U.S. military were selected to form “Astronaut Group 1”. These seven men were regarded by the public (to whom they were introduced on April 9, 1959) as valiant explorers, models of American values, and the faces of anti-Communism in space. The seven members of the Mercury Seven were: - Alan Shepard, the first American to travel into space (and presumably the first to play golf on the surface of the moon, as well) - Gus Grissom, commander of the first manned Gemini mission, Gemini 3; Grissom was also one of three men to die in the Apollo 1 fire - Malcolm Carpenter, the second American to orbit the Earth - John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth - Wally Schirra, the only one of the seven to fly in Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions - Gordon Cooper, pilot of the final manned Mercury mission - Deke Slayton, pilot of the American crew of the joint US-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project -- source link