The Mercury Seven were Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, Gordon Cooper, Wally Schirra, Deke Slayton, John Glenn, and Scott Carpenter.
The OG Shiny and Chrome.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
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They are actually Earth astronauts.
Big if true
The boot discrepancy is interesting, I wonder if that has to do with fit, mission assignments, rank, role, or personal preference.
These are just regular construction work boots spray painted silver
Yeah but the people on their left and right are wearing different boots, that is what I was referring to.
None of those look fit for space
I don't think they were doing EVAs or anything, so I don't really know how impressive the boots need to be, although I am thinking the construction boots / loggers on the middle two are not the regulation ones.
I am picturing them realizing they didn't bring their boots or they were still being made on picture day, so NASA engineers running around trying to find people who had a pair of boots they were willing to let them spray paint LOL.
Looks like left and right are wearing the actual boots btw
https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/boot-left-mercury-schirra/nasm_A19721158005
That's fairly close actually! Their suits were still be manufactured and the all the boots weren't finished for the photo shoot. These space suits were custom made to fit each astronaut after all. So someone ran to the hardware store the day of and picked up some boots and silver spray paint to make it work. I feel like they should've had them stand in the back to help hide how different they were.
wow, seems like I probably heard that story before and internalized without realizing, although I would love to believe I guessed correctly.
Super cool piece of history, its easy to forget often people are just flying by the seat of their pants despite the way history and photographs make it look / feel otherwise.
Maybe the people in back had even less of their suit ready. It’s awfully dark back there for them to be wearing shiny pants.
Crazy to think how quickly they had to take that photo as their space suits melted right off of them within seconds.
Also crazy to think that it took NASA seven months to realize that aluminum-coated nylon was a far better choice for space suit material.
Pretty cool historical capsule
Latter Grissom would be part of the Apollo 1 casualties
I could be more forgiving to NASA if a propulsion system had caused fatalities with Gemini than I can overlook the loss of Apollo I and Challenger - both of those are simply unforgiveable.
FFS, a pure O2 environment? Everything is flammable then.
The engineers told NASA temps had been too low for Challenger to launch and they went ahead anyway.
Fuck all the asshats involved in those decisions - you killed 15 people.
Iirc, with the Apollo 1 capsule, it wasn't just the O2 environment that was dangerous; the hatch opened inward, so it was impossible to open when the inside was pressurized. Rest in peace Gus, Ed, and Roger.
When they moved it must have sounded like crinkling bags of Sun Chips
There's an incredible documentary on YouTube about Project Mercury, I'd highly recommend watching it you're into the development of the US Space programme. It's over 2 hours 30mins, but it's so well put together.
also the series. "when we left earth" is a good watch
Awesome. Will check it out.
When's the new album drop?
Guts to strap onto the top of a missile and hope it worked.
I liked them in that Pump Up The Volume video
Ahh! It’s darth Vader from the planet krypton!
Such spacesuit
Much wow
Only two of them can connect to the waste evac pipe at a time?