The pool of qualified candidates immediately dropped from a little over five hundred to less than seventy. Of this number, many were eliminated because they could not endure the various physical and mental tests and the medical exams required. The number finally dwindled down and seven astronauts who are today known as the Mercury Seven were chosen. The Mercury Seven consisted of Alan Shepard Jr., Virgil Grissom, John Glenn Jr., Malcolm Carpenter, Walter Schirra Jr., Leroy Cooper Jr., and Donald Slayton.

We are familiar with cause and effect and causal arguments. This being the case, it is undeniable that the mercury astronauts possessed special qualities that caused them to be chosen for the Mercury Project. NASA only needed a few qualified men for this project and had they stayed with the original criteria, it is possible that they might have chosen men that met some or most of the guidelines,...
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