"Let's get on with it."

Happy Birthday, Project Astronaut!

On Oct. 1, 1958, NASA, the newly established agency to lead America’s civilian space program, officially began operations, with T. Keith Glennan and Hugh L. Dryden as administrator and deputy administrator, respectively. One of the new agency’s top priorities involved the development of a spacecraft capable of sending a human into space and returning him safely to Earth. On Oct. 7, Glennan approved the project, and the next day informally established the Space Task Group (STG) to implement it.

Gotta love management: 

In approving the project, Keith Glennan's comment had been, "All right. Let's get on with it." Bob Gilruth remembers that at the time he "had no staff and only [oral] .orders to return to Langley Field." When Gilruth politely pressed the administrator for some details about how he was to implement the plan in terms of staffing, funding, and facilities, Glennan reiterated brusquely, "Just get on with it."

The Rule of Names¹:

Contrary to the feeling expressed in some quarters, even among experimental test pilots, that the ballistic capsule pilot would be little more than "spam in a can," most members of STG believed from the beginning that their pilots would have to do some piloting. As George Low explained their views to Administrator Glennan, "These criteria were established because of the strong feeling that the success of the mission may well depend upon the actions of the pilot; either in his performance of primary functions or backup functions. A qualified jet test pilot appeared to be best suited for this task." Exactly how much "piloting," in the traditional sense, man could do in orbit was precisely the point in issue. 

The least technical task facing NASA and its Space Task Group in the fall of 1958 was choosing a name or short title for the manned satellite project. Customarily project names for aircraft and missiles were an administrative convenience best chosen early so as to guarantee general usage by contractors, press,  and public. 

Langley had earlier suggested to Headquarters three possible emblems or seals for the use of NASA as a whole: one would have had Phaeton pulling Apollo across the sky; another would have used the Great Seal of the United States encompassed by three orbital tracks; and a third proposed a map of the globe circled by three orbits. These proposals, as well as the name suggested by Space Task Group for the manned satellite project, lost out to symbols considered more appropriate in Washington. "Project Astronaut," preferred at first might lead to overemphasis on the personality of the man. 

Silverstein advocated a systemic name with allegorical overtones and neutral underpinnings: The Olympian messenger Mercury, denatured by chemistry, advertising, an automobile, and Christianity, was the most familiar of the gods in the Greek pantheon to Americans. Mercury, alias Hermes, the son of Zeus and grandson of Atlas, with his winged sandals and helmet and caduceus, was too rich in symbolic associations to be denied. The esteemed Theodore von Kármán had chosen to speak of Mercury, as had Lucian of Samosata, in terms of the "reentry" problem and the safe return of man to Earth. 

Had a mythologist been consulted, perhaps the additional associations of Mercury with masterful thievery, the patronage of traders, and the divinity of commerce would have proven too humorous. But "Mercury," Glennan and Dryden agreed on November 26, 1958, was the name most appropriate for the manned satellite enterprise. 

Greeks might worry about whether Mercury would function in his capacity as divine herald or as usher to the dead, but Americans, like the Romans, could be trusted not to worry. On Wright Brothers' Day, December 17, 1958, 55 years after the famous flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Glennan announced publicly in Washington that the manned satellite program would be called "Project Mercury."

And mankind would never be the same again, blah, blah, blah.

1 - Still on my Earthsea kick.