This movie really screwed up how I thought about astronauts

Comparing the Mercury astronauts to the Apollo astronauts isn't really fair. It's like comparing a modern airline pilot to the daring and cocky men who piloted the first airplanes and WWI dogfighting pilots. The first ones were fighter pilots first, and were pretty cocky and competitive. By the time Apollo came along, they were more like engineers who knew how to fly.

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I'm just a patsy!

Ha! Made you look!!

No, they're pretty much factual. Had they been fictionalized, the actual astronauts would have said something, as all of them were still alive, except Grissom.

Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, B.S. University of Maryland, additional courses at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT an accredited USAF graduate university with a school of business and a school of engineering).

Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, B.S. Purdue University (Indiana engineering school) additional B.S. from AFIT.

Scott Carpenter, B.S. University of Colorado.

Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, B.S. University of Minnesota.

John Glenn, B.S. Muskingum University, flew combat in WW2 and Korean wars, 3 air-to-air victories against MiG-15s in Korea while flying as an exchange pilot with the Air Force

Alan B. "Al" Shepard, B.S. United States Naval Academy (USNA), M.A. United States Naval War College.

Walter M. "Wally" Schirra, Newark College of Engineering and USNA.

For future reference, I don't know about the Coast Guard Academy or the Merchant Marine Academy, but the United States Air Force Academy, the United States Military Academy (West Point), and the United States Naval Academy offer only bachelor of science degrees. You can earn a degree in history, but it will be a B.S. in history, not a B.A.

They may have been full of p*** and vinegar, but they were not high school jocks.

The other services have various work arounds, but you cannot obtain a commission (become an officer) in the United States Air Force without a four-year college degree.

Many of the astronauts, and since 1970 most of them, have an M.S. or Ph.D.


The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank.

It wasn't until I saw Apollo 13 and then From the Earth to the Moon that I realized that these guys weren't very different from the engineers who built the ships in the first place. That's too bad.

That's nothing compared to Top Gun. In fact Navy pilots are a highly disciplined bunch. They'd never get their hands on an airplane if they weren't.

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