The central conflict of the episode revolves around the astronaut wives' effort to convince NASA to delay the program to respond to the tragedy, while NASA insisted upon maintaining its original schedule. In actual fact, as reported in the New York Times on Sunday, January 29, 1967, NASA determined within one day after the fire that the program would be "delayed at least four to six months."
Pat White, Ed White's widow, and White's children are shown as present at Gus Grissom's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. None of them were present, but were at White's own funeral, which took place at West Point, several hundred miles away, about two hours later.
During the party for Alan Shepard, a large photo of the Earth and Moon is seen at the front of the room. That image was taken by the astronauts of Apollo 8 in December 1968, over a year after the party supposedly took place.
When discussing the pin that Gus had ordered, Jo asks Betty "Hasn't he ever heard of a nice tennis bracelet?" Inline diamond bracelets were not known as "tennis bracelets" until the Chris Evert incident during the 1987 U.S. Open when her bracelet became unclasped and she asked to halt the event in order to search for it.