Life magazine has had an exclusive contract with the Mercury Seven astronauts and their families since 1959, paying them $500,000 total for the right to first publication of their personal stories. The contract continued through Gemini. I’ve been reading these profiles for seven years.

The coverage is celebratory by design — the magazine is invested in making these men and women look their best. The wives are shown waiting at home, doing housework, attending church, watching launches on television surrounded by children and neighbors. The astronauts are shown training, examining hardware, relaxing with their families.

The effect on American culture is significant. These profiles are how most Americans know the astronauts as people rather than as names in a news story. Rene Carpenter (Scott’s wife) is vivid and funny in print. Annie Glenn comes across as steely and private, which fits with what we know about how she handles the public attention on her husband. Betty Grissom is described as a worrier — which seems right given that Gus flew experimental aircraft before becoming an astronaut.

The coverage is selective. Life doesn’t write about marital difficulties or personal problems. It doesn’t write about the astronauts’ opinions about the war or civil rights. It constructs a specific image: American hero, loving family, ordinary man doing extraordinary things.

The image is partly true and partly constructed. These are real families with real complexity that the magazine smooths over. Some of the astronauts have well-known reputations for personal behavior that doesn’t appear in these pages.

But the image has power. It made the astronauts into figures that ordinary Americans feel personally invested in. The nationwide relief when Glenn’s heat shield concern turned out to be a false alarm was partly because millions of people had read his Life profile and felt they knew him.

Celebrity is a tool. The space program has used it skillfully.