NASA introduced the Mercury astronauts yesterday and I had to read the names three times before I believed it.

Seven men. Seven actual human beings who have volunteered to sit on top of a rocket and go into space. I keep looking at the photograph on the front page of the paper — seven men in suits, grinning, holding up little models of the Mercury capsule. They look so… ordinary. Not ordinary exactly — they’re all military test pilots with exceptional records — but they look like men you might know. Men who shop at the grocery store and mow their lawns and watch the Indians on television.

Their names: Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn, Jr. — Marine. Lieutenant Commander Alan Shepard — Navy. Captain Virgil “Gus” Grissom — Air Force. Lieutenant Commander Walter Schirra — Navy. Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Scott Carpenter — Navy. Captain L. Gordon Cooper — Air Force. Captain Donald “Deke” Slayton — Air Force.

I’ve been reading about their backgrounds. Shepard flew off aircraft carriers. Glenn set the transcontinental speed record in 1957 — coast to coast in three hours and twenty-three minutes, faster than any human had traveled overland. Grissom flew 100 combat missions in Korea. These are not ordinary men, for all that they look ordinary in photographs. They fly things that regularly kill people, and they keep showing up for work.

One of them is going to be first. First American in space — maybe first human in space, if we get there before the Soviets. I wonder if they know yet which one it will be. I wonder what it’s like to be sitting in that press conference, smiling for the cameras, knowing you’ve put your name in for something that might kill you.

Harold saw the press conference on television and his reaction surprised me. Harold is not a sentimental man. He fought in Korea and came back quieter than he left, and he doesn’t often show enthusiasm for things. But he called me last night and said, “Andrews, those are good men. You can tell.” He meant it as the highest compliment. Coming from Harold, it is.

Betty has already developed strong opinions about which of them she likes best. She likes Glenn because he looks trustworthy, she says. She also likes Carpenter because he has “kind eyes.” I told her we’re probably not going to the same barbecue as any of them, so her opinions on their eyes seem premature. She told me to mind my own business and passed me the sports section.

Seven men. One of them is going to ride a rocket. Some of them might not come back.

I’m going to learn as much as I can about each of them. I want to know these men — not personally, of course, but as well as a person can know someone from newspaper reports and magazine profiles. Because whoever goes up first, whatever happens, these are the men who are going to write the first chapter of this story. And I want to know who wrote it.

Godspeed, gentlemen.