Some scenes from the Right Stuff, shown in class on Feb. 13:

12 -- Listen carefully to the Tom Wolfe satirical dialog in this scene depicting US shock from Sputnik.
* Image of Korolev, not as he was in reality but as US perceived him.
* The scene in White House shows Lyndon Johnson (Senate majority leader in 1957) giving (mistaken) arguments for the importance of getting into space to US president Dwight Eisenhower.
* The loose power cord is a metaphor for US technical incompetence.
* In this scene we see real footage of Soviet cosmonauts Titov and Gagarin.
* There is a figure in this scene who resembles Von Braun. Listen as he makes amusing wordplay with German pronunciations.

22 -- Actual NASA footage of misfires, intercut with actors portraying astronauts observing failed launches. They'll have to get atop these rockets eventually.

26 -- Gagarin is first man in space in April 1961. Actors portray astronauts reacting to US dismay.
* The last scene shows prelaunch activity for first US manned space flight (May 1961), carried out by Alan Shepard on a Redstone (Jupiter) rocket. The scene ends with "Shepard's Prayer".
* The footage of famous CBS correspondent Eric Sevareid is real.
* Note the Death figure dressed as an undertaker. He appears in several scenes in this movie.