Mercury astronauts are shown the space capsule created by NASA's engineers in the film 'The Right Stuff,' and express their disdain. Indeed, their reaction is best summarized when Scott Glenn's Alan Shepherd proclaims, "we want a window."
In short the only reason, they are G-force tolerant, and physically fit. So require little to no "training" to pass the estimated physical requirements. They wanted to send a man to space. It was better to have one that could stay conscious. It also just so happened combat pilots can be told to get in the flying thing that you might die in.
@@GrasshopperKelly At this time NASA thought of the pilots more as occupants not as pilots. It prompted Chuck Yeager to call the mercury astronauts 'spam in a can.' When Gordon Cooper lost his electronics and brought back his spacecraft safely, no one called them span in a can again.
Kindof like engineers in planes, to make sure all the systems are working. No days with spacewalks and the international space station, its even more important then ever.
@@KCJbomberFTW when they select someone to go to space they put them through all the astronaut training anyway... lets see them put a regular person off the street into space... not a super fit, highly trained expert.
I doubt any scientist or engineer ever treated the pilots like that or the pilots the engineers and scientists like that. This is obviously a very dramatic representation of the events. Usually they would often work and talk to each other trying to learn from everyones experience. I mean I am sure some individuals have been full on themself. Egos happen. But most of the time people realise that they simply have to rely on each other.
@@ryanfritts1574 This is also true! Many pilots which would use to fly such air crafts and prototypes had quite some qualification as well. Makes this scene even more ridiculous.
you'd be surprised how often things like this happen in engineering. Not saying this scene is necessarily accurate or not, as I do not know. But as an engineer working in cutting edge industries, including NASA, this sort of discussion does happen.
It's a concept that's cropped up before. Early subway cars were built without windows, based on the idea that there was nothing to see underground. It was only when designers realized that human beings have an intrinsic need for a sense of place no matter where they are, that windows were finally added.
@@Nutzkie2001 exactly. That's why it was such a huge issue between the astronauts and engineers for a while. If you're an engineer, you look at numbers, and what will make the most statistical sense in bringing a human back safely. You're not necessarily thinking about the impact of society on a fantastic photo from orbit.
Lol, the way the pilots are portrayed here in a sort of jocks vs. eggheads scene. Almost expecting them to say "And do my homework while you're at it, Poindexter." Hollywood at its finest.
The other side of the coin is the pilots here were also former military. The 'egg heads' generally weren't. The US military had many well-established points of 'theoretical vs reality', one of them being a PR win. It wasn't called the space race for nothing. Another well-learned concept is experience trumps a degree - the man risking his own ass generally gets the last word.
@@hydrocarbon8272 the Mercury program was a civilian program, not a military one. The only reason the astronauts were Air Force pilots was because they were the only ones who had experience with aircraft and could be trusted with top secret information. But the astronauts themselves didn’t have very much to say about the design of the capsule itself. Your point that experience trumps degree doesn’t make much sense here, because nobody had any experience in building a spacecraft at the time, let alone flying it.
@@timandshannon03 Valentin Bondarenko died in 1961 in an incident somewhat similar to Apollo 1. A fire started in an atmosphere testing chamber, and he suffered severe burns while the support crew struggled for half an hour to get the door open against the pressure difference. The incident, and Bondarenko's involvement in the Soviet space program, was largely wiped from the official records.
@@vdem33 Oh man you haven't seen this? Great film from a time when great films were made, another good one to check out about the start of the "space race" is a film called October skies
@@Clogmonger It’s not dumb. It’s a catchy phrase & also very relevant to the scene. It was also actually said, in real life, by NASA engineers and astronauts.
The astronauts were concerned about being merely a "spam in a can" passenger rather than being an active pilot, but this would be a highly dramatized distillation of the actual conversations that ignore that the capsule designers had decent counterarguments to what the astronauts wanted.
Windows are failure point. Explosive bolt are dangerous and may active in a undesirable manner. Also, pilot may experience a state of mind were he can't no longer be in control of the spacecraft. Also, the term astronaut totally stays.
@@youkofoxy plus all those extra elements add mass, which takes more fuel to burn, which needs bigger engines lift, which takes more fuel to burn, which need bigger engines to lift, which takes more fuel to burn, which need bigger engines to... Crikey
It's not even that the windows are a failure point, they're outright useless, especially given the level of control they actually had back then. For example, they weren't going to go soo far off course as to be able to tell from the window and then correct for it. There wouldn't have been enough fuel for such corrections if things went that wrong, so a window wouldn't have helped. The whole thing was designed to essentially be on a fixed train track trajectory. Looking out the window wouldn't have given any useful reference to do anything. Even when they took manual control near the surface for landing, they didn't rely on a window, they relied on altitude, speed, and orientation sensors and stuff like that. It's as useless as windows on a submarine.
In reality, no German engineers were involved in the design of the Mercury capsule. Werner von Braun - off of whom the unnamed "chief German scientist" is obviously based, only designed the Redstone booster (and later the Saturn series of rockets). An argument like this did occur, but with an american engineer at North American Engineering. Still a great scene, though; I'm willing to excuse the artistic license given how truly epic this film is!
My grand-uncle was employed for the ergonomics of the Mercury capsule. Unlike popular thinking and the portrayal in the film (The Right Stuff) he said the German scientists, many of whom were spared trials in Europe for various war-related charges, were cooperative with the astronauts. They did of course have the final word in engineering decisions...
@@Crusty_Camper What were they supposed to do? Tell Hitler they weren’t interested in building him things because they didn’t like what he was doing? Yeah that would’ve gone over well
Far out. Thanks for sharing. Guess the filmmakers ( and author of the book? ) were taking more than just a little dramatic license. I design software and use this clip to illustrate how the needs and perspectives of the user often go completely ignored.
Very True. This whole scene is silly. The astronauts spent months in the development program working with the Engineers on ergonomics, controls and the like, without stupid Hollywood cowboy attitudes but as professional team members. Also, the prototypes had a porthole window by default, with the periscope. The astronauts requested a "larger window" after the Shepard MR-3 flight. Shepard even had manual controls for pitch roll and yaw which was part of the original design.
Both John Glenn and Gordon Cooper had to manually align their spacecrafts in order to safely re-enter the atmosphere. Allong with manual override, the window was key in them being able to do that.
German Scientists: There never was no Bell Shaped Craft during WW2. America: Why does this Capsule look a lot like the German Bell shaped craft, you were working on? German Scientists: "I SEE NOTHING!"
I bet hardly anyone who watches this clip knows the significance of the three questions asked by the astronauts; "what about a hatch?" (Gus Grissom), "where is the window?" (Gordo Cooper), "what if the automatic control systems fail?" Scott Carpenter. Have at it, guys. Look it up and enjoy some very interesting history! Each question is important in the Mercury program.
Grissom's hatch nearly got him killed, Carpenter's automatic control failed, and Cooper had to land his capsule using a wristwatch and spotting stars out the window!
And yet, people are complaining that this conversation didn't happen in this way... No shit. This is a movie made to provide entertainment using aerospace research as the plot. It is not a biopic or documentary detailing the actual events.
I doubt the Mercury Seven walked around in their space suit during discussions about design and engineering. But it was a great movie and fun to watch.
I think it was implied that they were about to meet with that noisy gaggle of press outside the hanger. The suits would have been good for the photo op.
The Mercury Seven made a good point: technology has glitches and Americans would be pissed if something went wrong and the “astronaut occupant” had no control over the “capsule”. I love the line “No, that’s where the hatch with the explosive bolts goes.” I doubt Grissom actually said that, but if he did, it would be sadly ironic.
Apparently the capsule can handle coming back into the earth’s atmosphere at temperatures of a billion degrees, but they need to be easy with it when they smack it with their hands.
The Beryllium Heatshield on the 2 Suborbital Flights was basically Metal. The Ablative Shield used on all later Flight, till the Shuttle was a Phenolic Resin and was slappible. The Ceramic Shielding on the Shuttle was the Delicate One, easily Damaged, in fact it was more crushable than Styrofoam, as it was basically a whipped up Slurry of Glass, and had almost not Structural Strength
At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, they have a display that explains how the Astronauts came to Chapel Hill and learned how to navigate by the stars. That is an awesome old-school way to navigate!
This triangulated relationship is comically rendered down to a level discernable to the intellectual capacity of small children to the point where it is almost physically painful to watch
Right after this they walk over to the door and without permission they let in the reporters and have their picture taken in front of the "space craft"
Because it was a photo shot of the Astronauts in front of the Mercury capsule. They went were the capsules were being assembled (secret location). And since they never saw the capsule before they (the film producers) used the historical moment to create this funny scene in ‘the Right Stuff’. The images of the seven astronauts, as they were portrayed here posing in the final moments of the scene, appeared later in real life in Life Magazine and other publications of the Era.
@@Clogmonger Why? They have done so many amazing things, and could do much more, if they had the money. Fun fact: Originally, the Space Shuttle had a two-stage fully-reusable winged flyback design, but that was too expensive to develop on NASA's shoestring budget after Apollo had ended.
Love this scene. Even though the movie took artistic license for the drama (don't think any German scientists were involved in the original Mercury program), can we at least appreciate the incredible actors? Ed Harris. Scott Glenn. Dennis Quaid. Fred Ward. Add Sam Shepherd & Barbara Hershey, to name a few! Hall of Famer Anthony Munoz as Gonzales? Are you kidding me! What a cast!!!
Except we didn’t. You think Nixon was talking to people on the moon in the sixties, yet I can’t drive 2 exits on the highway without my phone-call dropping?
Its amazing to think that the manual override and the window features they argued for were vital and essential components in future missions like apologise 13 where they could see the damage was done on the capsule and perform a burn without the computer thanks to the window and manual control functions
The actual Mercury capsule design/engineering was led by an NACA/NASA American Engineer with a Mech Engineering degree for LSU who decidedly did not have a German accent...this scene is complete BS. The German's were principally involved with the engine design along with the mathematical aerodynamicist work. Key contributions indeed but they had nothing to do with the capsule, including the capsule's aerodynamics math that led to its blunt nose (a Ph.D. Aerospace/Computer Engineer who works for a large American defense contractor's Missile Systems company and lives in Cocoa Beach. My Dad was an Engineer at The Cape in the Space Race years).
Everybody needs to settle down. People are getting caught up in the minutia. The clear message of the movie is that Chuck Yeager was the best pilot that the good Lord ever made!
The line sounds good, but doesn't make any sense and drives me crazy. The scientists don't need astronauts (Buck Rogers). They need bucks to make their machine. Gordo JUST SAID in the previous line, "you know what makes this bird go up? Funding makes this bird go up." The astronauts are simply a means to an end. The line should be, "No Buck Rogers? No bucks." They're telling the scientists that "unless we are Buck Rogers, you won't get the bucks that you need," and they won't cooperate without a few things.
Agreed... But have you ever worked with arrogant engineers? I was an embedded systems software developer and worked with a bunch of engineers, they needed me to write the code, but I was treated poorly, just because I didn't have the same kind of diploma. We can see the same thing there.
@@l3chevalier Engineers by definition are not the most "mutual effort" guys, just like architects and designers. TRW Space systems had 30,000 of them. ALL the Dave's , Bob's and John's had numbers. I had to find the "John" that called me for a plan. "Take your hat off, son, you're in God's country. 1974
@@l3chevalier Especially German ones. Mind, the ones that I often worked with had PhDs compared to my little BS, but they would create the most inflexible "prototypes" and then expect me to make it sit up and beg despite a backbone being omitted as an unnecessary part, to analogize it.
I wonder how it went in real life, I bet the astronauts didn't need to be all threatening and that scientists weren't anal about the specific terminology used.
the problem with movies like this is that people who dont know better take it all as historical fact- see below comments re this scene never happened irl
Off course this didn't happened in real life. This movie should be taken for what it really is: "Pure Entertainment". If you want facts, hit the history books or watch the interviews of the people who built and flew the thing.
@@tomjustis7237 According to Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, the argument about the window was with an American engineer, rather than the Germans as the movie showed.
@@apollosaturn5 My apologies. I thought you meant the actual argument over the window never happened. Yes, the "German engineer" was pure Hollywood fiction.
This is a purely fictional scene that never happened. The Mercury capsule chief designer was Max Faget, a native of Louisiana. The German engineers had a very warm and mutually supportive relationship with the astronauts. Gus Grissom was not a squirmy man, either. The RIGHT STUFF is hard for me to enjoy with all of it’s mixed up time sequences, misrepresented people, and fabricated stories. Perhaps Hollywood will tell the real story one of these days.
I love TRS, but it hurts my soul how they painted Grissom. He, like the rest of these guys, was a cool professional that performed at his peak when under high stress. They did wrong by him in this movie.
Its a great film, but just a film. You don't pick test pilots in desert bars. Yeager was selected for this assignment while stationed at Wright Patt by Col Albert Boyd. Putting a man in a cockpit of a rocket plane who knows nothing about the aircraft would be stupid for the program and suicide for the pilot. But it makes a great Hollywood scene. The film depicts the Grissom story with dramatic effect, but skips facts and makes the uneducated think he was a screw up when he and Schirra were probably the two best engineering minds of the Original 7, though they did very casually redeem him in the end. Even Yeager and Ridley with the F-104 at the end was wrong because Ridley already died six years prior in '57. Great film, but by no means a documentary. I still loved when the real Yeager served the pretend Yeager at Panchos. Fred the bartender was played by BGen Yeager.
I was 10, when this movie came out. Seen only once in the theaters, with my mom. I THOUGHT, it was going to be a fun movie..mostly boring, and adults talking. I only remembered the two most embarrassing parts of the movie.( for me, watching it with my mom) The "...SPERRRRM." comment, and the naked lady under the feathers. I recently rewatched it, and it's just an awesome movie, lots of adult "kid" humor, and a huge cast of actors at a young at, that I didn't know about then, but recognized today. Definitely a different America then. Not just about the timeline, but also how the film itself was pushed then.
This 3 minutes and 34 seconds encapsulates the entire conflict between the Mercury program astronauts and the NASA engineers. During the engineering and development period of the Mercury hardware, NASA (and the Russians) flew monkeys several times, and planned to treat the Mercury astronauts exactly the same way: as organic cargo. In fact, according to the engineering managers from the program, they felt that the WORST thing that could happen was the astronauts interfering with the capsule systems in any way. The only reason humans ever flew in these missions was for public relations; much more useful information would have been garnered if the 200-lbs of astronaut had been replaced with 200-lbs of instrumentation. We just had to prove to the world we could do it before the Russians did...even though there was no real value in doing so.
‘No real value in doing so’ sounds like a ‘salty loser’ response from a Commie. The ‘real value’ is that we have roughly 10-20 companies worth 2-3x over what the ‘Soviet Union’ was independently, introducing ‘to scale’ more viable space travel to the common person. Along with a slew of life changing technologies, to thank for the space programs (involving humans, and human testing) Don’t get caught up in your paragraphs of nothingness, The morale, mental and economic effects of landing those men on the moon, are still being seen today. Stay salty Psuedo-intellectual Commie.
This is really neat... as German engineers, they perfectly represent what they believe. The engineering is infallible because that is what they have been trained to believe. But what they do not understand is that you can do everything right and still fail. As an industrial electrician and maintenance person working on German built machines, I run into this constantly. I spoke to a German who designed a machine that was grossly malfunctioning. I said, "We have a problem." He immediatley countered with "WE DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM, IT IS YOU THAT HAS A PROBLEM!" To which I replied "Herr, WE did not design this macshine. YOU designed it. YOU gave us this problem. So can we admit WE have a problem? It took a few days for them to relent. We eventually sent them our solution. When our company bought a new machine from the same company, it was delivered with the modifications we made to the earlier machine we called out. Humility is the best quality of any engineer.
I'm glad the automation is good enough now that windows aren't needed any longer.... I wonder how one of those guys would feel about going up in one of SpaceX's new capsules with touch screen interfaces....
Man, I just love these man-children here. "How about this. We put on your hatch with your window, and your explosive bolts. Against all odds, every back up fails, every redundancy goes out. You take manual control of the capsule. While being pancaked into your seat by so much gee force you can't even lift the throttle lever. The rocket spins off course. You trigger the explosive bolts, then hit the atmosphere at mach eight, and the 2200C shockwave enters the capsule and ignites everything inside including your own flesh. Half a second later the burned out shell explodes from overpressure. Go to the press with that, Buck Rogers." I know we've all got a job to do, but I personally could not stand someone who has no idea what they're asking threatening me and my work. Hope this isn't how it went down in real life.
@Tristan Ritland, on January 27 1967 all three Apollo 1 crewmembers were killed during a cabin fire because they couldn't get the hatch open. With that context, explosive bolts would seem to be a pretty good idea - it would have saved them from being burned alive. Just fyi.
It's funny, this got recommended to me the same week that there is both a big argument in the Star Trek Fandom about the virtues of Windows and the conclusive answer to it in the Season 2 Finale of Lower Decks. Short answer? Even in the 2380s...you need a window and the ability of a person to control the spacecraft's maneuvers.
