Personal Recollections of the Selection
of the First Seven Astronauts.
Continued...

What Do We Call Them?

When we started the job, we had a sense of unreality. Here we were, about to take the first small steps by men that would eventually lead to what, years later, Neil Armstrong called “one giant leap for mankind.” This was new, unexplored territory. We had to plow new ground, full of stumps and rocks, with few landmarks to guide us. Remember—this was two and one-half years before the first Russian, Yuri Gagarin, and the first American, Alan Shepard, would fly in space within three weeks of each other, on April 12 and May 5,1961.

Oddly enough, one of the first hot issues was the names or terms. What should we call the men who would one day fly into space? At Langley Research Center on December 1,1958, we brainstormed, and every name mentioned went up on the blackboard. Of course, somebody said “spaceman” and someone else said “superman” and still another said “space pilot.” But perhaps he would be a passenger instead of a pilot, so some wise guy proposed “man-in-a-can” Other suggestions were made, some kidding and some serious. Then one of us came up with a solid suggestion, “Mercury,” which made sense. It referred not to the planet Mercury and not to the quicksilver metal mercury, but to the messenger of the Roman gods, who had wings on his heels and legendary speed of flight. But someone had heard the word mentioned before, so he called Washington. Sure enough, only five days earlier, on November 26, NASA headquarters had officially adopted Project Mercury as the name of the first American manned spaceflight effort, but not yet used the term publicly or even told us.

With our best name so far already taken, out came the dictionaries and thesauruses. Someone found that the term aeronaut, referring to those who ride in balloons and other lighter-than-air vehicles, was derived from “sailor in the air.” From this we arrived at astronaut, meaning “sailor among the stars.” We thought we had actually invented a new word, but it later turned up as having been used earlier, in 1929, probably in science fiction. In any event, the term astronaut rang true and was adopted. The Soviets followed suit with cosmonaut, meaning “sailor in the universe.”
All the while we were debating the three really basic personnel questions of duties, qualifications, and recruiting. First, what would an astronaut actually do in space? A job analysis may be prosaic, but it is the only sound way to start determining what kind of person to select for a job. We had to start with a valid job description before we could start answering our second basic question: What should the qualification requirements be?

At this point the only living things to fly in space had been seeds, fruit flies, several monkeys, and the dog named Laika. Would the first astronauts also be just passengers? If so, their only duties would be to survive, observe, and report, and thus they should be primarily selected to withstand the expected rigors of space. But no one could tell us whether they would merely ride or have control like a pilot. The plans for the space capsule were still being debated.
Our third key question was also a seemingly routine personnel matter: What would be the best recruiting sources? Here we were sure that the answer would be to recruit from the best talent in the nation, especially civilians. After all, the President and Congress had bypassed the military in setting up the ill-starred Project Vanguard. More recently, they had done likewise in establishing NASA itself as a civilian agency, to operate publicly rather than in secret, “for the benefit of all mankind.”

 

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