A New Analysis May Have Just Solved A Decades-Old Mystery Of The Space Race

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/ [login to see] /gus-grissom-liberty-bell-mercury-the-right-stuff
Anyone who's seen the 1983 film The Right Stuff might remember the scene where astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom (played by actor Fred Ward) nearly drowns after splashdown when the hatch on his Mercury capsule unexpectedly blows, flooding the spacecraft with seawater.

The movie — and the book by Tom Wolfe that it was based on — suggest that Grissom panicked and manually triggered the explosive bolts that open the hatch, despite the astronaut's insistence in debriefs following his 1961 flight that it was caused by a mechanical malfunction.

Despite Grissom's apparent vindication in a NASA post-flight review, the question of the blown hatch has persisted, at least in the mind of the public — thanks in large part to The Right Stuff.

Now, new evidence has emerged to support Grissom's account.