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October 13, 2006
The Right Stuff
I finished listening to The Right Stuff on tape a few days ago and it helps me to understand why Tom Wolfe is so celebrated a writer. I never had a chance to read any of his books before, but like any good American I am interested in the history of space exploration and thought this would be a good place to start. Plus I liked the movie (and the Yeager flight that ended the book makes much more sense than the same flight did in the movie where it felt very out of place).
For those unfamiliar with this story it covers the exploits of post WWII test pilots like Chuck Yeager as he attempts to break the sound barrier and the other pilots who became the Mercury astronauts. The book goes into good detail on the lives of the astronauts and the various rivalries between each other and between other pilots as it goes over the history of American and Soviet spaceflight in the 1950's and early 1960's. Although in retrospect we know who won the space race, at the time it looked like the Soviets were going to win and Wolfe conveys a lot of the fear and drama that was involved in this undecided outcome. The main thing he captures well is the awe and hopes put into the Mercury 7 who became instant heroes or as Wolfe dubs them repeatedly as 'single combat warriors' in the tradition of Achilles and David and Goliath. Wolfe uses repetition well to make his points for instance with the respect for the astronauts courage phrased repeatedly as 'but our rockets always blow up'.
Wolfe defines the Right Stuff in similar repeated ways. Pilot life revolves around 'flying and drinking and drinking and driving.' The fight to become the best is 'climbing the great invisible ziggurat' with those who do not make the cut as astronaut/pilot (or who die trying) end up stuck on one of the lower levels, while the best pilots and those who thrive under pressure and know how to 'push the envelope' have the Right Stuff.
The section that I learned the most from and found the most interesting was the section about the use of chimps as astronauts. Besides the fact that this caused derision among other pilots, 'after all a monkey is going to make the first flight', the actual chimp training was very impressive. Lots of aberrant conditioning was used to produce the best chimp pilots and the best of all chimp pilots (named Enos) had to be broken first by locking him by himself for a week in a dark, cramped room before he would submit to training. After that electrodes were put on his feet to give him negative reinforcement with banana chips as positive reinforcement. Enos was smart enough that he was able to successfully orbit the earth and continue hitting the right buttons even though the conditioning mechanism failed and started to give him random shocks. The story of the first chimp in space (named Ham) was also interesting since the reporters thought he was freaking out after his first flight because he saw the space capsule (which he had never seen from the outside before) that had just traumitized him so much, even though he was probably freaking out because of the mob if reporters and had been through enough similutions to not get freaked out by space flight.
This was one of the best books I have read in a while and I will be reading more Tom Wolfe in the future.
Posted by Pete at October 13, 2006 07:36 AM
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