I was watching "The Right Stuff" a couple of days ago and I remember the cabinet meeting where they were discussing the types of wonky people they were considering sending up into space and the room went crazy when Eisenhower insisted on test pilots as being the type of people who should be tested. Was there some kind of bias? Did the early NASA planners basically want just mindless specimens?
Washington Meeting (18:48): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0wHzKzZ5rM&nohtml5=False