Inspired as a boy by the fantastic comic-strip fiction of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom forged a high-flying reality as a man becoming one of America's first astronauts and the first man to go into space twice in a capsule vessel. Although Grissom died at age 40 in 1967, he cut an integral path through several seminal moments of the 20th century, including 100 fighter-pilot missions in the Korean War and test-pilot duty in California.