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The Right Stuff

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Seeing the anniversary note of the Mercury Seven this morning, brought to mind Tom Wolfe's great book The Right Stuff.  I thought Kaufman did a great job with the movie as well, as it really captured the spirit of that era. I really liked the way Wolfe and Kaufman weaved Chuck Yeager into the action.  Sam Shepard was super as Yeager.  I was a small boy in the 60s so my memories are more of the Apollo mission and in particular Neil Armstrong's "small step."  I couldn't get enough of chocolate "space sticks" and orange "Tang."

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  1. MartiApril 12, 2011 at 10:08 AM

    50 years ago today (4/12/61): first human space flight when Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth. As a child, I couldn't understand how it was that the first US space flight (Alan Shepard) went up but didn't go into orbit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonApril 12, 2011 at 10:54 AM

    Weren't so confident, I guess, but John Glenn soon remedied that.

    ReplyDelete

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