Meanwhile, Back in Real Life. . .

Bright-eyed and bristly-haired, the seven original Mercury astronauts rocketed not only into space but into the collective imagination of America. Yet except for the highly visible John Glenn, most of the other real-life astronauts have gravitated into private orbits.

Alan Shepard, 59, the first American in space, emerged as a shrewd entrepreneur after leaving NASA in 1974. Based in Houston, he has developed extensive real estate projects and is a wholesale distributor for Coors beer in southern Texas. Remembered for hitting a golf ball on the moon as commander of Apollo 14 in 1971, he relishes playing in celebrity golf tournaments and, like others of the Mercury group, is a grandfather several times over.

Virgil ("Gus") Grissom died in 1967, when he and his two crew members of Apollo 204 were asphyxiated in a launching-pad fire at Cape Canaveral.

Gordon Cooper, 56, the most flamboyant of the original seven, is now a conservative Encino, Calif., businessman who describes his second marriage in 1972 to Susan Taylor, now 38, as the highlight of his life. Besides spending five years as a vice president for research and development at Walter E. Disney Enterprises, Cooper has parlayed his technical expertise into a galaxy of ventures such as his own consulting firm and, currently, a corporation that will produce alcohol fuel.

Walter Schirra, 60, lives with his wife of 37 years in an exclusive development southwest of Denver, travels frequently and especially enjoys big-game hunting. The only astronaut to fly in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, he does TV commercials and other promotion for Tang, the orange drink that the astronauts slurped in space, and for Actifed cold tablets. Although he sits on the boards of several companies, the affable Schirra says he works only when he wants to: "I'm through punching time clocks."

Scott Carpenter, 58, moved on from the Mercury program to become an "aquanaut" in the Navy's Sealab program. Since then he has pursued various oceanographic ventures but admits to having "difficulty finding a good, solid third career." Today he lives in the San Fernando Valley outside Los Angeles and works part-time giving speeches and consulting. He and his second wife, Maria Roach, 36, have two young sons, and Carpenter describes himself as mainly a "father-in-residence."

Donald ("Deke") Slayton, 59, a no-nonsense loyalist to the space program, remained with NASA until 1982, when he became president of Houston's Space Services Inc., the first American privately financed space enterprise. Divorced this year, he revels in flying his formula midget racing plane in competitions, but otherwise keeps a low profile. His astronaut celebrity, he says, was something to be tolerated rather than enjoyed: "I just learned to cope with it." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.