Saturday, February 18, 2012
Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.
John Glenn fever gripped Cape Canaveral on Friday, just as it did half a century ago when America was on the verge of launching its first man into orbit.
Hundreds of NASA workers jammed a space-center auditorium, three days before the 50th anniversary of Glenn’s historic flight, to see and hear the first American to circle the Earth. Then journalists got a crack at Glenn, ever patient at describing his momentous flight aboard Friendship 7 and the decades since.
The 90-year-old Glenn was joined at both events by Scott Carpenter, 86, the only other survivor of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, as the weekend of anniversary festivities began.
Glenn said he recollects the flight so often it seems like it took place just a couple of weeks ago. He and Carpenter visited their old launch pad, Complex 14; it was from the blockhouse there that Carpenter called out “Godspeed John Glenn” before the rocket ignited.
The national attention then was “almost unbelievable,” Glenn said, adding that he and his colleagues learned to live with the acclaim “or tried to, anyway.”
The early 1960s were a magical time in Cape Canaveral and adjoining Cocoa Beach, Carpenter said. “Everyone was behind us. The whole nation was behind what we were doing,” he said.
Glenn’s Friendship 7 capsule circled Earth three times Feb. 20, 1962. Carpenter followed aboard Aurora 7 May 24, 1962.
They were the third and fourth Americans to rocket into space. Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom flew short suborbital missions in 1961, the same year the Soviet Union launched two cosmonauts into orbit on separate shots.
The Cold War was raging, and America was desperate to even the score. Glenn could have died trying if the heat shield on his capsule was loose as flight controllers feared. But the protective shield was tight, and Glenn splashed down safely.
Glenn, a U.S. senator for Ohio for 24 years, returned to orbit aboard shuttle Discovery in 1998, becoming the world’s oldest spaceman at age 77 and cementing his super-galactic status.
“Flying in space at age 77, you’ve given me hope. I’ve got a few good years left, and I’m ready,” Kennedy Space Center director Robert Cabana, a former shuttle commander, told Glenn. Another retired shuttle commander, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr., shared how the Mercury astronauts “really lit up the world for me in terms of probability or possibility of things that we could do.”
Glenn recalled how the Mercury astronauts traveled during their training to Cape Canaveral to watch a missile blast off. It was a night launch, and the rocket blew apart over their heads.
“That wasn’t a very good confidence-builder for our first trip to the cape,” Glenn said. Improvements were made, and Glenn said he gained confidence in his Mercury-Atlas rocket, a converted nuclear missile. Otherwise, he said he would not have climbed aboard.
Glenn and his wife, Annie, who turned 92 Friday, were on hand Thursday evening for the attempted liftoff of the newest of the Atlas rockets, an unmanned booster that NASA contractors hope one day will carry astronauts. Windy weather forced a scrub of the Navy satellite launch.
Lousy weather spoiled Friday night’s launch attempt as well.