Footnotes

Known for his close relationship with the astronauts, Ralph Morse was so integrated into their lives that John Glenn affectionately nicknamed him "the eighth astronaut."

Captured during a fitting at Langley Air Force Base, the Mercury Seven astronauts are wearing their iconic silver pressure suits for the first time—designed as their critical "life support" in the harsh environment of space.
Front row, left to right: Walter Schirra, Donald "Deke" Slayton, John Glenn, and Scott Carpenter.
Back row, left to right: Alan Shepard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, and Gordon Cooper.

Walter Schirra on the pressure suit's importance:
"My special interest and responsibility for the past year has been the development of these 'life support' or 'environmental control' systems. To me, the most interesting of them all is the pressure suit which the Astronaut will wear into space. Basically, the suit is a tailored rubber bag, a man-shaped balloon, and it is our last-ditch protection against disaster. If the capsule, orbiting in the vacuum of space, springs a leak during flight and the pressure takes a big drop, delicate barometric sensors will discover it immediately and signal the Astronaut to close his helmet's face plate. The suit becomes sealed and inflates automatically. In effect, the Astronaut is then wearing his own oxygen-conditioned, pressurized cabin."
(LIFE magazine, August 1, 1960, p. 36)

Literature
LIFE, 1 August 1960, p. 37
Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon, Reynolds, pp. 38-39
Space: A History of Space Exploration in Photographs, Chaikin, p. 40

Read more
The Right Stuff: When America Met the Mercury Astronauts by Ben Cosgrove for TIME magazine
CLICK HERE: Time Magazine

Watch more
CLICK HERE: Astronauts: United States Project Mercury, ca. 1960