Mercury 7 Flight Safety

I note that in the last two episodes the writers are repeating a not-insignificant technical error from The Right Stuff. They are conflating the Mercury-Redstone and Mercury-Atlas launches and giving a false sense that the later launches were regarded as relatively safe. Thus you see Rene Carpenter in the last episode seeming not all that scared about the launch of Scott's mission and talk among the wives as if the missions are turning out to be relatively safe after their initial terror.

The Mercury launches were split between two different booster systems, with the sub-orbital flights (Alan's and Gus's) being launched on Redstone boosters and the remainder on Atlas boosters. In both TRS and in episode one test launches are shown blowing up left and right, giving the impression that all of NASA's boosters were death rides. True, in the early 60's not just NASA but the US armed services were blowing up rockets all over the joint. The US heavy lift booster programs were, briefly, a joke.

But with regard to the Mercury program, Redstone was known to be a relatively safe booster. It was the Atlas test launches that were littering the Cape with shrapnel from failed launches. And even though the kinks were supposedly worked out by the time of Glenn's launch, the unconventional design of Atlas's storage tanks had everyone on edge. All of the Atlas launches were regarded as risky and one of the reasons Mercury wasn't extended was due to the feared risks of an Atlas launch failure.

Again, here's an instance where a little better research by the writers would have allowed them to portray the real dramas of the program instead of substituting contrived, Peyton Place melodrama.