Abstract
In July 1975, just six years after Apollo 11 had journeyed to the Moon, the last three NASA astronauts to fly an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the joint Apollo-Soyuz docking mission with the Soviets (ASTP). Though it had been known there would be a delay in sending the next American astronauts into space on the Space Shuttle, few would have foreseen the six-year void between ASTP and the first Shuttle orbital test flight.
‘The Right Stuff: the qualities needed
to do or be something, especially
something that most people
would find difficult. [Demonstrating]
the right stuff to be a leader.’
Cambridge English Dictionary
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Notes
- 1.
The men who formed NASA’s seventh astronaut group in August 1969 had been selected under the criteria for the classified USAF Manned Orbiting Laboratory. Chosen in three groups (November 1965, June 1966 and June 1967), seven of them transferred to NASA two months after the cancellation of the military space station program.
- 2.
Formally known as the Personal Rescue Enclosure (PRE), although it was used in astronaut selection processes for many years, none ever flew on a Shuttle mission. [17]
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Shayler, D.J., Burgess, C. (2020). Expanding on ‘The Right Stuff’. In: NASA's First Space Shuttle Astronaut Selection. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45742-6_1
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