The Right Stuff

By a nice chance this post ties in with the one below. "The Right Stuff" in the post title was the term used in the early NASA program to refer to what was needed to get on the space pilots program, which by coincidence was code named the "The Mercury Seven". The Mercury Seven were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton.

It was also the title of a book by Tom Wolfe about the U.S. manned space program and a 1983 film based on the book ..... However, the term could easily be coined for the soviet Cosmonauts of the same era, who often had very primitive technology to work with, and yet for long period were the leaders in the space race..... it was Fifty years ago when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, when in a metal cannonball, 2m (6ft 6in) across, its centre hollowed out to - just about - allow a man to fit inside, he orbited the Earth for 108 minutes before landing.

The Capsule came down on land not the sea .....

Even in a better picture, its hard to credit what the first man in space went up in.

If you ask me, they were all made of "The Right Stuff" whichever side of the cold war divide they were on .....