THE RIGHT STUFF by TOM WOLFE, PLEASE GIVE ME thoughts about the book in general please be specific if you can?

Question

i have a problem with the book, it seems to be laden with too many details,the wives in the book melt my heart because they fear for their husbands lives.

Answer 1

i saw the movie. i learned that it took much ambition and courage to become an astronaut. there were endless medical tests to pass before they even were allowed to go into space in a rocket composed of "three million moving parts, all supplied by the lowest bidder." having not devised an in-suit sanitation system, alan shepard was forced to urinate into his suit. having been told that there would be no window in the capsule, the group threatened to tell the news media, reminding the ex-german scientists, "no bucks, no buck rogers". especially poignant was the failure to recover gus grissom's capsule, deke slayton's barring from the missions due to a percepted heart condition, and chuck yeager's exclusion from the group because he was not a college graduate. one of the lighter moments was the suggestion that grissom use his middle name instead of gus, since his first name was virgil. when they discovered it was ivan, which sounded too soviet for the time, they thought gus was all right.

Answer 2

I thought it was rather dry reading myself. Its supposed to show the heroism of the men I think, and their wives for being supportive. I think it implies some irony too as when some one actually dies and they act like it could never happen to them, how they rationalize it out.