The first seven Mercury astronauts: we go behind the prepackaged, unblemished saints we knew through the media to find imperfect human beings who were actually even more heroic. The astronauts are heroes, no doubt about it. As space pioneer Chuck Yaeger bitterly points out, these men all knew the risks they were taking as they rode their primitive capsules into space. They knew they were powered by rockets that could explode them into the tiniest of atoms. There were the fierce fires of re-entry that could reduce them to cinders, as well as the possibility of no re-entry, leaving them to perish miserably in their orbits. Yet these men eagerly took those risks. They were made of the right stuff.

This film contains the first realistic shots of a spacecraft reentry. For long shots, visual effects supervisor 'Gary Gutierrez' used a small model of the Mercury capsule. This was coated with flammable material, ignited, and slid about 100 feet down a wire toward the camera, which was protected with a sheet of Lexan.

[first lines]


Narrator:
There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.

Continuity: The footage of the Sputnik launch and the Vostok flight of Yuri Gagarin was actually the launch of Soyuz rockets.

Performed by Bob Wills
Courtesy of MCA Records, Inc.