I finally got around to reading The Right Stuff this weekend, an impulse buy of the Kindle edition. I had seen the movie a few years back, and it had been on my radar to read it since then. It’s a classic, so I hardly need to describe it, but what struck me as the most interesting thought, which had never really emerged from the movie, was the idea of astronaut as personification of single combat. Mano-a-mano against the cosmonauts, proving that Americans were braver, more talented, had more of the right stuff.
Then I watched the James May on the Moon documentary, and was struck by how much was lifted from the book, even the catchphrase, without any mention of Wolfe. They neglected to pick up the “astronaut as champion” role as well. And maybe Wolfe felt it was time to raise the point again, because his editorial in the New York Times today focuses solely on that point, and how once the combat was complete, the Soviets vanquished, there was no longer the same psychological need for the manned space program.
via Jalopnik, the Daily Dish