![]() ![]() Gordon Cooper is waking up with a busted hand amid the shards of a whisky tumbler after the funeral of a friend, with whom he was Topgunning. We first meet them as individuals who have no idea how their destinies are being shaped by a couple of guys poring over eight sheets of potential candidates for an era-defining job. One of them will become the first American in space. He takes delivery of a list of 110 of the best of the best of the best, most manly of manly men from the armed forces, from which he will choose the seven to be trained as – and who will come to define the image of – astronauts for Project Mercury. We meet the head of the Space Task Group, Bob Gilruth (played by Patrick Fischler, the actor for all your buttoned-up-but-charismatic-leaders-of-a-certain-age-who-still-need-to-look-good-in-uniform needs, who is searching down the backs of sofas for funding at Edwards Air Force Base and hoping that the Russians won’t colonise Mars before the US has a chance to put a cardboard rocket or two in the air. ![]() We are two years into the space race sparked by the Soviet successes with Sputniks 1 and 2, the US president has promised to put a man in space before the end of the decade and Nasa is freaking out at its chances. After a brief scene establishing established hostilities between Glenn (Patrick J Adams) and fellow Mercurial Sevener Alan Shepard (Jake McDorman) over breakfast on the day of the first Mercury launch in May 1961, we flash back to 1959. ![]()
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