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This reminded me too of Jim Lovell's reaction when they switched the Apollo 8 plan at "the last minute" to actually be the first TLI mission. Something about the way he tells it, and just the sheer (and apparently extremely genuine) reaction of awe, wonder, excitement, mixed with a seeming complete lack of worry, concern, self-preservation instinct, just kinda signals to me those guys were just built different.

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There's a good book, "The Right Stuff" [0] by Tom Wolfe, which goes into quite a bit of detail about the stories and some of the psychology around being a test pilot in those days, and in particular about the men chosen as the Mercury Seven astronauts, many of whom were also later involved in both the Gemini and Apollo programs.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(book)

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