I did a quick search before posting but couldn't see anything much but this movie. I just watched it tonight and I enjoyed it, but I was left feeling that it wasn't entirely accurate in its portray.

Not knowing much about Mercury (hey I was born in '72 so it was 10 years before me) I couldn't really judge it, and some parts just seemed totally out there (like Glenn's fireflies.)

What did thery get right, and wrong, is it worth adding to a space collection with Apollo 13 and From the Earth to the Moon and is there any other Mercury stuff about. On the same lines, is there anything good on Gemini? It seems to be sort of the forgotten missions.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

The book and movie are both heavily critiszed by space history buffs, especially on its portrayal of Gus Grissom and the hatch accident after his Mercury flight.
Glenn's firefly stuff and his fascination for it was real. Later it was found out it were ice crystals from the water sublimator of Mercury's cooling system.

The movie is entertaining, but shouldn't be taken as a good description of real events. "Apollo 13" is much closer to what happened and most changes can be attributet in the need to condense the story.

Harald

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

That said, the book (in particular) and to some extent the movie get high marks from mant of those same space buffs for capturing the feeling of the era. The "light of a Commie moon", strong drive to compete in what initially looked like a losing race, and hero-worship (with all its positive and negative aspects) were all there. Well, that's what they tell me - the first news event from the wide world I can remember is John Glenn's launch. (First one, you funny people). Probably warped me for life.

I recommend Moon Shot (book and movie - book is by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton (with a writer I can't remember right now)). I highly enjoyed both of them.

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[Astronomy's] one of those things that makes us more than just well-fed cows. It satisfies a really deep hunger to know, to go someplace, to explore ...a hunger that is as basic to human beings as food and shelter... -Br. Guy Consolmagno, Ph.D.

Having avidly followed the space program from inception, I think I can give you a list of what they got right in "The Right Stuff":

1) There was a space program called Mercury.
2) They got the names of the astronauts right.
3) They did send the astronauts into space.
4) ........I'm sure there had to be something else....

I was most particularly annoyed by the way they depicted Gus Grissom. I got to shake his hand when he was at McDonnald in St. Louis. My dad was friends with and on the church council with the guy that was chief council at Big Mac at the time.

Mac was building the Gemini capsules and the CC took my dad and me, and two other father/son sets to see the facility one saturday. Mr. Grissom was there auditing the progress. He was buisy and only smiled, pumped our hands and left the room.

The capsule was just a skelleton with some of the guts being bolted in. I was expecting it to be built in one of the huge hangers like I'd seen for the rockets in the news paper, but it was in a nice clean room with Armstrong cieling and floor.

The high point of the tour was being given a professionally made model of the Gemini capsule and service module flying under the St. Louis, gatway arch.

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It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker

Thanks for the insight people. I borrowed the DVD from my parents with anticipation to watch it this week (which is what I still plan to do.) I have only seen parts of the movie and I never would have even known what was exagerrated/fabricated and what was accurate.

Question: As I watch the movie in the coming days, to what extent should I take events in the movie with grain of salt?

It's Mc Donnell actually. (Oh somebody would have said it.)

My advice is to just watch it without getting too worked up over how accurate it is. IMO it's accurate enough. I enjoy watching The Right Stuff but when it ends I always feel like there should be more. If they got a few facts wrong, so be it. The exception being the part about Gus. Anyway, it's good.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

Never seen the movie, but the book is a Heeeeeee-WAACCCK! If you like Tom Wolfe. I obviously do. Fine writer.

In an piece written years later, Wolfe noted his original intention had been to cover things through Apollo, but the story was so big and took so long that he had to chop it where he did.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Yeah, I struggled with which spelling was correct and was tooooo lazy to go looking. Thanks for the correction. ops:

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It's just one of those damn things of which there are many few. -- Dan Blocker