posted 01-17-2005 05:37 PM               

It wasn't quite as simple as that. A lot of work went into this selection process, and a lot of people were involved. An eminent panel spent a lot of time winnowing down that finalist group by applying a lot of test and suitability results, and initially came up with five names. The original mandate was for six names, but they were having a hard time deciding between other candidates, so Bob Gilruth allowed them to extend it out to seven. Even though it's not really stated anywhere, there ended up being a nice little service balance of three Navy, three Air Force and one Marine. For more information on the selection process, I thoroughly recommend Scott and Kris Carpenter's book, "For Spacious Skies," which has a comprehensive and factual run-down on the Mercury selection process, as well as these two sites. The first is from the NASA online history, "This New Ocean":
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4201/ch6-8.htm

and the second is a paper on the selection process delivered by Dr. Allen O. Gamble, who was on the selection panel:
http://www.geocities.com/mingomae/

As to what those two names might have been, no one will ever say.

Cheers,

Colin

posted 01-22-2005 02:32 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Philip:
Wasn't there a group of female candidates selected for the MERCURY missions ?
" The Mercury 13 ' if I remember correct ?

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And here is their official website which tells their story http://www.mercury13.com/ .

posted 01-31-2005 04:11 PM               

Different documents from the time say different things. In cobbling together a decent history, you have to take them together and reinterview as many of the principals as you can to arrive at a decent picture.

When Scott Carpenter was briefed at the Pentagon in Feb. 1959, for example, he was told that "a dozen astronaut-engineers" were to be chosen, and a handful were to take the flights. But everyone would train. All of them would be called astronauts.

Dr. George Ruff recalls the number 12 but then heard a rumor that NASA had enough office space only for 6.

The narrative tradition Neal Thompson may have used is sourced, I believe, in Charles Donlan-Warren North. I have seen it referenced in other space memoirs. It is PART of the documentary record, not all of it.

But the documents I read did not specify a number of finalists. It was more, let's gather the best candidates and see who qualifies and then decide.

The truth is, the astronaut numbers (a dozen? five? seven?) were not cast in stone. Project Mercury itself was a work in progress--hardware, design, men to take the rides (no women, alas, met the seven criteria).

Bob Gilruth in 1959 didn't know how many flights there would be. But he knew he needed individual pilots who would function together as a team of engineers. So a team he (and others) selected.

And we know their names, Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Slayton, Shepard.

The documentary records ARE clear, however, that these seven men were not the top seven numerically ranked candidates as determined by the Lovelace and Wright-Patterson testing supervised by members of the Working Group.

Because in the end, by late March 1959, the Selection Committee, to whom the Working Group reported, said: "We don't want rankings. Just give us the names of the finalists--the men who were not disqualified at Lovelace and Wright Patterson."

Some background: Of the 508 candidates who met the seven general criteria (see THIS NEW OCEAN), 32 men advanced to Lovelace. At the end of the five-stage selection process, the Working Group recommended 18 of these 32 men "without medical reservations."

The Selection Committee (Gilruth, North, Gamble, Silverstein, Donlan) did not want the Working Group or the WG's numerical rankings to dictate personnel decisions. So they chose without reference to the rankings.

They chose the top three by chance (or serendipity), then the fifth and eighth, and then the eleventh and the fifteenth. Medical confidentiality keeps the numerical rankings secret. I suppose an FOIA or the deaths of the principals will change this.

Interestingly, one very able researcher here on cS has posited/guessed that the top seven numerically ranked candidates were all Navy/Marine, causing heart palpitations at the time among Air Force proponents who saw the numerical rankings.

This conspicuous Navy dominance may account for the conspicuously even distribution of the final seven candidates to include Air Force pilots. But I have a service (Navy) and filial (Carpenter) bias.

Bob Voas, of the Working Group, says he knows of no attempt to balance the services.

Regardless of narrative tradition--six, seven, twelve--my sense is that when you use a historical account, or someone's lone anecdote, to insinuate (as Chris Kraft does in his ungenerous, inaccurate account of the 1959 selection in FLIGHT) that some of the original seven did not belong to this august group, or were somehow not worthy, then you have to wonder about motive and about veracity.

What is true about the 32 and the 18 certainly is that they were all hugely accomplished pilots, causing the Working Group to complain about their "embarrassment of riches," making it so hard for them to decide whom to choose.