reporters asked questions about their personal lives instead of their war records or flight experience, or details about Project Mercury. After Glenn responded by speaking eloquently "on God, country, and family", the others followed his example, and were applauded by the reporters. Test pilots accepted that their jobs were dangerous; during Glenn's three years serving as one for the Navy, 12 had died. When asked about how their families thought about their taking on such a dangerous job, most of the seven were surprised, as they had never considered this before. Glenn replied that he "didn't think that any of us could really go on with something like this if we didn't have pretty good backing at home. My wife's attitude towards this has been the same as it has been all along through my flying. If it is what I want to do, she is behind it, and the kids are too, one hundred percent." Carpenter received even more applause when he noted that he was at sea when NASA had phoned to inform him that he had been chosen, and his wife Rene had accepted on his behalf. His selection had also tested the Navy's commitment to Project Mercury when the skipper of his ship, the , refused to release him, and Burke had to personally intervene. Cooper's wife Trudy had left him in January 1959 after he had an affair with another officer's wife, and had moved to San Diego. During the selection interviews, he had been asked about his domestic relationship, and had lied, saying that he and Trudy had a good, stable marriage. Aware that NASA wanted to project an image of its astronauts as loving family men, and that his story would not stand up to scrutiny, he drove down to San Diego to see Trudy at the first opportunity. Lured by the prospect of a great adventure for herself and her daughters, she agreed to go along with the charade and pretend that they were a happily married couple. Group members Influence The Mercury spacecraft was less finished than the astronauts' previous vehicles. After watching an Atlas rocket explode during launch on May 18, 1959, they publicly joked "I'm glad they got that out of the way"typical gallows humor that test pilots used to cope with dangerbut privately calculated that one of the seven would die during Project Mercury. The astronauts participated in