Disney has released the first trailer for “The Right Stuff”, a biographical series that will follow the heroics of the Mercury 7. The series has been produced by National Genographic and will be premiered on Disney+ on October 9.
Based on Tom Wolfe’s bestselling book of the same name, “The Right Stuff” is a dramatised telling of NASA’s Project Mercury and the 7 military pilots that became the United States’ first astronauts.
With the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and Yuri Gagarin in 1961, the US had quickly fallen well behind its Cold War counterparts in its endeavour to reach space. What followed was a rapid expansion of the country’s space program including the founding of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the creation of the Project Mercury.
Project Mercury was to be the newly formed agency’s first major endeavour. It hoped to emulate the Soviet Union’s human spaceflight efforts with the goal of launching the first American into space. Seven brave men were chosen from the ranks of military test pilots to crew single-seat spacecraft that would be launched atop modified ICBMs. These men would become known as the Mercury 7.
The National Geographic’s “The Right Stuff” series is expected to follow the exploits of the Mercury 7 from selection and training, to each of the six historic flights. The series is expected to premiere on the Disney streaming service, Disney+ on October 9.
