At the height of the Cold War in 1959, the Soviet Union was dominating the space race which is why the U.S. government conceived NASA's Project Mercury that ended up creating the country's first astronauts. The author Tom Wolfe encapsulated this moment in American history in his 1979 novel "The Right Stuff" and now National Geographic has adapted it into a new original scripted series. The Right Stuff is an eight-episode scripted series which gives viewers an inside look at what would become America's first reality show as a handful of the military's most accomplished test pilots competed for a chance to be the first US citizens to travel to space. Revered test pilot Major John Glenn (played by Patrick J. Adams) and one of the best test pilots in navy history Lieutenant Commander Alan Shepard are the two pilots at the center of The Right Stuff's story that tells the tale of the Mercury Seven. The rest of the Mercury Seven includes Lieutenant Gordon