A book about the harsh everyday life and courage of military test pilots and the first US cosmonauts, about the rivalry between the USSR and America for dominance in space in the romantic era of the 1960s, about a pilot’s brutal duel with the dark element of fate in the fight for the “right thing” , the possession of which opens the way to the triumph of the human spirit, conquering the universe. The documentary nature of the narrative, based on materials from the Mercury space program, as well as the memories of participants and eyewitnesses, is combined with descriptions of extreme situations that give the work dramatic tension. The impetus for the creation of the book was the curiosity of the author, eager to understand: what “really” is “ a vast and mysterious area that has literally remained as dark as the far side of the moon for more than half a century: military aviation and the current American officer corps."