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Possessor of 'right stuff' leaves us

By Tim Wood

First published in The Columbia Daily Herald July 26, 1998]

Another possessor of the "right stuff" has left the world.

Stories about the death of Alan Shepard, the first American in space, noted that he personally didn't like that term. But even if Shepard didn't want to call it the "right stuff," he and his fellow Mercury astronauts had something that few mortals possess.

The term "right stuff" is most closely associated with a book author Tom Wolfe wrote about test pilots and the seven men chosen to be Mercury astronauts. The test pilots and astronauts had special qualities that allowed them to fearlessly fly unproven aircraft to the "edge of the envelope" or strap into a small capsule on top of a converted intercontinental ballistic missile and go into space.

Wolfe described the astronauts as "single combat warriors." They were the warriors who would fight the enemy on behalf of the rest of us.

The war was the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union had large numbers of nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at each other. They fought for prestige in the eyes of the rest of the world. The space race to the moon was born out of a desire to demonstrate a nation's superiority in space technology, which theoretically would show whether communism or capitalism was the better system.

Had there not been a Cold War, we might still be trying to get to the moon.

The Soviet Union had demonstrated its superiority to the U.S. in missile technology by launching larger satellites and putting dog in orbit. However, they didn't make an provision for bringing the dog back.

There was concern about a "missile gap" between U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Intercontinental missiles were just one part of the "trial" of nuclear deterrence. The other parts were submarine-launched ballistic missiles and manned bombers. A case could be made that the U.S. had superiority in those two areas, so the missile gap wasn't a national emergency.

The Soviet Union took the early lead in the space race. They sent the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into space less than a month before Shepard's 15-minute suborbital flight. Gagarin orbited the Earth one time, while Shepard's Mercury capsule flew into space for five minutes then returned.

The Soviets also recorded several other firsts, including the first woman in space, the first multi-person crew and the first "space walk." However, not until the last 10 years did the free world learn that the Soviets took enormous risks to achieve those feats. The Americans took risks as well, but those risks didn't include cramming a three-man crew into a one-man craft and removing the escape system to make room for them.

Shepard and his Mercury colleagues became the warriors who would contest the Soviets for space supremacy. They were introduced to the public with great fanfare and each received lucrative contracts with Life Magazine for exclusive coverage of their lives. They became household names.

For the most part, they came through. There were some questions about why Gus Grissom's capsule sank, or why Scott Carpenter used up so much maneuvering fuel in orbit and overshot his landing area.

But there was also John Glenn courageously executing his re-entry, not knowing if his heat shield would break loose and cause him to be incinerated. Cooper had to fly his re-entry manually after the automatic system broke down, and actually outperformed the computer.

Their successes led to the Gemini program, which pioneered many of the techniques that would be used in the Apollo program, which put 12 men on the surface of the moon.

Once I asked a veteran fighter pilot to define "the right stuff;" he said it was "an inquisitive mind and a positive attitude."

Those are two good traits to have. But the "right stuff" can't be easily defined. You just know when someone possesses it.

Alan Shepard and his fellow single combat warriors had it. As a result, the American flag is on the Moon, technology took a giant leap forward and the Cold War came closer to an end.

John Glenn is scheduled to fly aboard the space shuttle later this year. It would be his first flight since his Mercury mission. Before he died, Shepard told Glenn he would like to be his "backup."

Shepard didn't live to be Glenn's backup, but his spirit will fly with Glenn and all other space travelers who have the right stuff.

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