3 ms·

>"Finally it was decided to use military pilots from mostly a PR point of view." I suspect that decision making process was dramatized in The Right Stuff. Test

>"Finally it was decided to use military pilots from mostly a PR point of view." I suspect that decision making process was dramatized in The Right Stuff. Test pilots make sense for several reasons: they already understand aeronautical concepts, are used to g-forces, have experience with state of the art machines, have a high risk tolerance, and are already familiar with following orders.

throwaway894345 5y ago
> are already familiar with following orders. Probably more than this, following protocols but having an ability to think for themselves on their feet (as opposed to a grunt following minutia orders).
mumblemumble 5y ago
I'm sure it was over-dramatized in the film (which I haven't seen, I'm just assuming they prioritized compelling storytelling based on the fact that it wasn't a public television documentary), but supposedly something like that decisionmaking process actually happened. For example, see Wikipedia's synopsis of the book, which was presumably at least somewhat more factual (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(book)#Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(book)#Book): The storyline also involves the political reasons for putting people into space, asserting that the Mercury astronauts were actually a burden to the program and were only sent up for promotional reasons. Reasons for including living beings in spacecraft are barely touched upon, but the first option considered was to use a chimpanzee (and, indeed, chimpanzees were sent up first). Another option considered was using athletes already accustomed to physical stress, such as circus trapeze artists. Wolfe states that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, insisted on pilots, even though the first crew members would not actually fly the spacecraft.

3 ms·

>"Finally it was decided to use military pilots from mostly a PR point of view." I suspect that decision making process was dramatized in The Right Stuff. Test

by BitwiseFool 5y ago

throwaway894345 5y ago
> are already familiar with following orders. Probably more than this, following protocols but having an ability to think for themselves on their feet (as opposed to a grunt following minutia orders).
mumblemumble 5y ago
I'm sure it was over-dramatized in the film (which I haven't seen, I'm just assuming they prioritized compelling storytelling based on the fact that it wasn't a public television documentary), but supposedly something like that decisionmaking process actually happened. For example, see Wikipedia's synopsis of the book, which was presumably at least somewhat more factual (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(book)#Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(book)#Book): The storyline also involves the political reasons for putting people into space, asserting that the Mercury astronauts were actually a burden to the program and were only sent up for promotional reasons. Reasons for including living beings in spacecraft are barely touched upon, but the first option considered was to use a chimpanzee (and, indeed, chimpanzees were sent up first). Another option considered was using athletes already accustomed to physical stress, such as circus trapeze artists. Wolfe states that President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, insisted on pilots, even though the first crew members would not actually fly the spacecraft.