Urban Spacemen on Fuzzy Lands,

As is often the case, on an east coast summer day, the transitions between blistering sunshine to unwanted squalls were all masked by the Haar.

There has been little reaction to the drugs bust in the press. I was hoping to make an appearance on STV’s Scotland Today as the concerned local resident - “They seemed like the average family, who would have thought something like this was going on under our noses? I’m shocked. There are small children playing in the street, what if they had wandered into his shed and began eating it?” – but they never appeared. The incident was briefly mentioned on Kingdom FM news and it gained a few column inches today’s East Fife Mail. Perhaps more news will surface in next week’s edition.

I finished reading The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe this morning and the space shuttle Discovery blasted-off last night, so there was no coincidence. I did fear for the shuttle after the reported problems (bits falling off, over-heating fuel tanks) but everything seemed fine. I did watch the launch online, it was gripping viewing.

“What are you watching?”
“The shuttle launch.”
“I can see you becoming one of them.”
“That’s impossible.”
“How?”
“It’s beyond me."
“How?”

I haven’t done anything to prove to NASA that I have the right stuff. I loaned this book from the library because of the frequent references to it in Moondust. The Right Stuff is written in a different style to Moondust and as such they’re too different to compare, The Right Stuff is written as a narrative in the third person whereas Moondust is written in the first person, and that’s as much autobiographical as it about the astronauts.

The Right Stuff documents the earliest stages of the American space programme. Laudably, Wolfe covers both strands of the American attempts to win the battle for the heavens: the quick, dirty rocket and capsule method employed by NASA and the re-useable rocket planes being tested by the Air Force. After the disappointment of the Apollo series, it’s arguable that the rocket planes being tested at Edwards Airfield around the time of the Mercury programme presented a better opportunity for long-term space exploration but the government opted for capsules seated on top of rockets to carry human passengers into space. And that’s what much of The Right Stuff is about, the 7 Mercury astronauts had shown that they had genuine skill and bravery as military pilots and they found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that they would only have limited control in these automated capsules – they wanted to be pilots.

The Right Stuff paints the whole psyche of the pilots of the day and explores the rivalries between the astronauts and pilots as they each vied to show that they had the right stuff and tried to not be left behind. It’s really interesting and has many funny moments, those astronauts and their wives had many stupid and laughable traits.

Throughout the book, I developed a real hatred of American hero John Glenn, but that perhaps says more about me than it does about John Glenn, or how Tom Wolfe portrayed him. I really enjoyed reading the book, I doubt I’m really all that interested in the technical details of space travel, it’s the romanticism of it that I’m taken by and The Right Stuff is really insightful and it gives me some more stuff to marvel at and ponder.

I may not have the right stuff to sit on top of a rocket; I was too nervous just watching Discovery take-off yesterday, but in a way, we all have the right stuff, it’s just a matter finding out what for. And if we get left behind, we’ve got to hope that it’s in a nice niche.