Aeromedical Laboratories. We traveled separately, as we had to Lovelace, to preserve secrecy.
The tests at Wright-Patterson were more familiar. They subjected us to the kinds of stresses test pilots could be expected to endure, heightening some of them in an attempt to simulate the thin reaches of space. Again, the doctors were guessing. They injected cold water into our ears as a way to create a condition called nystagmus, in which you can’t keep your eyes focused on one spot, then measured how long it took us to recover. They measured body fat content and rated our body types as endomorphic, ectomorphic, or mesomorphic. They inserted a rectal thermometer; sat us in heat chambers, ran the temperature to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and clocked the rise in our body temperature and heart rate. We walked on treadmills, stepped repeatedly on and off a twenty-inch step, and rode stationary bicycles. We blew into tubes that measured lung capacity and held our breath as long as we could. We plunged our feet into buckets of ice water while the doctors took blood pressure and pulse measurements. We sat strapped into chairs that shook us like rag dolls. We were assaulted with sound of shifting amplitudes and frequencies that made our flight suits quiver and produced sensations in our bones. We endured blinking strobe lights at frequencies designed to irritate the nervous system. We entered an altitude chamber that simulated sixty-five thousand feet of altitude, with only partial pressure suits and oxygen. We lay on a table that tilted like a slow-motion carnival ride. We pushed buttons and pulled levers in response to flashing lights to test our reaction times. We sat in an anechoic isolation chamber to see how we might endure the vast blackness and silence of space. All the while sensors plastered on our heads and bodies recorded our reactions.
The isolation chamber was simply a dark soundproof room. A technician led me in, seated me at a desk, and turned out the lights when he left. I had no idea if I would be there for fifteen minutes or fifteen hours. I knew the easiest way to make the time pass would be to put my head down and go to sleep. But I suspected that the doctors wanted mental alertness. I opened the desk drawer after a while and found a writing tablet. I had a pencil in my pocket. “Will attempt to keep record of the run,” I wrote on the first page.
I had moved on to summarizing my thoughts on the isolation experience when the door opened after three hours and the lights came on.
I had been back in Washington two weeks when the phone rang at my desk at BuAer. I answered it and heard Charles Doulan say, “Major Glenn, you’ve been through all the tests. Are you still interested in the program?”
“Yes, I am. Very much,” I said, and held my breath. “Well, congratulations. You’ve made it.”
I don’t remember my response. I know I felt a swell of pride – that I couldn’t help – but I also felt humble at being a small part of a program that was so full of scientific talent and of such importance to the nation.
Hanging up the phone, I was struck by the fact that the call had come on the day it did. It was April 6, my wedding anniversary. Annie and I had been married sixteen years, and that night we had planned to go to dinner at Evans Farm Inn in McLean and a play in downtown Washington in celebration. There was no greater celebration than sharing the news with her. I told her I had no idea where all this would lead, but wherever it was, we were in it together.
The Mercury Astronauts met for the first time at Langley Air Force Base on April 8, 1959. We were seven pilots, three from the Air Force, three from the Navy, and one from the Marines, but none of us were in uniform, and at that time we were still anonymous. I had just received a routine promotion from major to lieutenant colonel, but as astronauts, we all ranked equally. We wore suits, the uniform of our new service, as we milled about with NASA officials and discreetly tried to check out the other men who had been chosen for this new assignment.
Robert Gilruth was the head of NASA’s Space Task Group, which included Project Mercury. Bob had a fringe of thinning white hair and prominent black eyehrows, which gave him a look of Buddha-like wisdom. He was an old-line aerodynamics investigator with a quiet, congenial manner and he stepped to a podium in the room where we had gathered to brief us on how NASA planned to tie us into the project.
“You’re not just short-term hired guns,” he said. “NASA wants the benefit of your experience as test pilots and engineers. Project Mercury is a team, and you’re part of it. This isn’t the military, where direction comes from the top down. We want your direct input. Any problem you have with design, or anything we’re doing, you let me know.
“But let me warn you. Project Mercury isn’t a continuation of anything. Nobody’s ever gone into space before. It’s completely new; it’s untried, there are many uncertainties ahead. If for any reason whatsoever you decide it’s not for you, you can go back to your respective service with no questions asked.”
None of us were looking back, however. After Bob’s brief introduction, we tried to get to know the men we were going to be working with.
I had met some of the others who’d been chosen, but didn’t know them well. They may have known a little more about me, as a result of the cross-country speed run and Name That Tune, than I knew about them.
Al Shepard had worked on the Crusader. We had attended meetings together; and comments he had made revealed a sharp, analytical mind. A couple of times Annie and I had been in groups that included him and his wife, Louise, but we didn’t know them well. I knew Scott Carpenter and Wally Schirra, because they, like Al, were Navy – I didn’t know Wally’s work or personality; but Scott had been in my group during the testing at Wright- Patterson. We shared an open-minded curiosity that had made us like each other right away.
The Air Force guys, Gordo Cooper, Gus Grissom, and Deke Slayton, I didn’t know at all. I had met them for the first time when we were going through some of the testing.
One thing we did know, from our own histories and what we had gone through at Lovelace and Wright- Patterson, was that we were all extremely competent. The Langley meeting bolstered that impression. The way each man walked, stood, and shook hands exuded confidence, and maybe just a little arrogance. The fact that we had been selected meant we stood on a high step on the test pilot ladder. We were part of an elite group, an exclusive fraternity. Talking to each other, we didn’t need preliminaries.
I learned quickly that several of the others had flown in Korea. Gus had about a hundred F-86missions under his belt. Wally had served as an exchange pilot with the Air Force, as I had, and had shot down two MiGs. Scott had flown P2Vs, a long-range patrol plane; he had only about two hundred hours of jet time, which made his selection a little surprising. Deke and I were the only two who also had flown in combat during World War II; he had done bombing runs in B-25s over Europe. More recently, he and Gordo had been test pilots at Edwards. They had been flying the hottest of the Air Force jets, the Century series, although Deke was in fighter ops and Gordo was in engineering. Gus had been doing electronics testing at Wright-Patterson.
Walt shambled to the podium while people handed out press kits with our names and information about Project Mercury. Then we waited for a few minutes with flashbulbs going off in our faces while the reporters with afternoon deadlines scrambled for the phones to alert their offices. They came back, and T. Keith Glennan, NASA’s director who had served in the same capacity at NACA, stood up and said, “It is my pleasure to introduce to you – and I consider it a very real honor, gentlemen – Malcolm S. Carpenter, Leroy G. Cooper, John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil I. Grissom, Walter M. Schirra Jr., Alan B. Shepard Jr., and Donald K. Slayton… the nation’s Mercury astronauts.”
And then there were the Soviets. Their strides in space, combined with our fear of their intentions, placed the astronauts in the front line of the war for not only space supremacy but – in many minds – national survival. The Soviets seemed so joyless and ideologically grim, and we didn’t want to be like them. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had said, “We will bury you.” Americans knew a threat when they heard one.
