Yes indeed I watch the Right stuff a couple times a year it was an amazing time to grow up during it TV in the classroom of launches and recovery Yes the wives were a big part of it they too sacrificed and had to worry big time and to think today we have no manned capability.... zero we should have been to Mars by now
One of the greatest tragedies I’ve witnessed is how we keep chopping NASA in half. When I was growing up (the 70s, so it had already been cut in half once from your childhood) NASA had spacelab, and manned orbits, and was starting the probe program and was working on the shuttle. Now we’ve got probes. Makes me want to cry.