4 ideas
The right stuff is never named or claimed directly. It is proved over and over by climbing a pyramid of tests, where every rung washes some pilots out and nobody reaches the top for good. Because stating it outright would be taboo, status is carried through what the pilots leave unsaid, their deadpan understatement, and who is quietly allowed into the fraternity.
When a peer dies in a crash, the surviving pilots find a specific mistake he made, and they do it even when the evidence points to machine failure. The ritual keeps their belief that skill controls outcomes, so they can keep flying without facing the real odds.
The Mercury capsule was first built as fully automatic, with the astronaut riding along as cargo, and the test-pilot fraternity mocked it as 'spam in a can.' The Mercury Seven used their public celebrity as leverage to get a window, a hatch they could open themselves, and manual control added. The episode shows professionals pushing back on automation that removes their agency and identity.
The Mercury astronauts were celebrated as heroes before they had flown anything, while Chuck Yeager, the pilot who actually broke the sound barrier, stayed obscure. Cold War politics needed 'single combat warriors' to stand in for the nation, and the press shaped them into pious family men. As a result, public status came from symbolic usefulness and media narrative rather than from peer-recognized skill.