Hanging out on the edge of space

Press, 29 March 1980, Page 17

Hanging out on the edge of space

The Right Stuff. By Tom Wolfe. Cape, 1979. 436 pp. $18.75. (Reviewed by Stan Darling)

Tom Wolfe’s “new journalism” writing style sometimes wears thin, sometimes goes astray, but in “The Right Stuff” — his new book about the early American astronauts (remember .them?) — it .is right on target. Sometimes the exclamation marks and repetitive asides .seem to intrude, but more often they work to keep the story zipping along at a test pilot’s pace. > Just when the reader has had enough about how an astronaut’s wife handles the prodding of the Genteel Beast (the press), Wham., Wolfe is into a sustained piece of grab-the-reader-by-his-scruffy-neck-and-drag him-along-into-the-action piece of

writing. ■ . , „ Wolfe has the moxie, the right stuff (if you will) to start his story with the military pilots who crashed and burned, testing new aircraft, almost as often as they stayed alive. In a way, some of them were the first astronauts — the ones such as Chuck Yeager who took rocket planes to the edge of space, “explored the edge of the envelope,” and hung their hides out over the edge. For them, life was always on the edge. Many fell. Without getting bogged down in details, Wolfe takes us through the first astronaut selection, the jealousies’ and the manoeuvring. His description of gruelling physical and psychological tests done on the candidates is hilarious, even though it may have been somewhat less funny for the men.

There was a lot of hesitation about leaving a life of flying and going into a project where astronauts would be squeezed into a capsule and shot off with little ability to control their craft. As the project wore on, more and more changes were made to the capsule so the "pilot” could have more feeling of command. While the Russians were sending

men into orbit, 'the Americans were still getting ready to send a trained chimpanzee into space. American rockets were not the most reliable in the early days —“ Our rockets always blow up,” as Wolfe puts it — and chimps were considered the best way to ensure that things would stay together. Astronauts still thought of themselves as guinea pigs at times, but chimps were the first ones. The funniest episode in the book has Wolfe imagining he can see into the mind of the first sub-orbital chimp, read his thoughts and translate them into words. What that chimp thinks, before, during and after the flight, is almost inhumanly droll. Wolfe builds up to punchline at a fever pitch of invention. Wolfe intersperses his story of the astronauts, and good descriptions of their flights, with the series of rocket plane tests that kept pace with the space programme. Those pilots were also going into space for short

periods, under full control of their machines, in early versions of today’s Space 'Shuttle. They were often miffed that orbiting astronauts got most of the attention, were seen by the public as having most of the right stuff. American astronauts were seen as single combat warriors, Wolfe said, doing battle with the faceless, nameless Chief Designer of the Soviet Union space successes. One early astronaut lost his capsule. It sank in the sea because he let water pour in while waiting for rescue helicopters. Another was considered a panicker because he used up so much fuel while doing experiments in space. Still another went to sleep as he waited to be blasted off the launching Pa With Wolfe at full throttle, the reader can be guaranteed a wide awake time. His book is even more interesting read along with two earlier works on the first moon landing (Norman Mailer’s “Of A Fire On the Moon”) and life in Skylab (Henry S. F. Cooper’s “A House in Space).