Epilogue Summary

Things are changing. Despite Shepard's campaign for a three-orbit mission, the Mercury program is declared complete. NASA is worried enough about keeping Congressional funding for the Gemini and Apollo lunar landing programs without prolonging Mercury. It is hard to remember the Russian panic that drove the Mercury program. The twin orbits of Vostok 5 and Vostok 6 stirs no fear and Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko proposes a ban on nuclear weapons in space. There is a hotline between the White House and the Kremlin, and the Cold War is plainly over. At the awards banquet of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, the Original Seven are given the Iven C. Kincheloe award for outstanding professional performance in the conduct of flight test. It goes almost unnoticed in the press, but to the astronauts themselves this award means that they are finally being given the...