There was a good article by James Oberg in The Space Review about this, recently: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2310/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/ar

There was a good article by James Oberg in The Space Review about this, recently: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2310/1 http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2310/1 The response to the original letter seems very blunt, but the original letter was written on the day of John Glenn's flight - back then, the requirement to be an astronaut was to be a test pilot.