Sky & Telescope November 1998 [antikvár]

'?ilSSpectrum"Godspeed, John Glenn!"Back into space tie goes this October quintessential American hero 36 years after he rode the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule thrice around the Earth.John Herschel Glenn was the second to make such a trip; he followed the Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin by 10 months. Second place doesn't usually get you on the front page, but during the Cold War Glenn's journey was a huge morale booster for a very troubled space program and a very fearful nation.At least in the U.S., Glenn, now 77, continues to share the limelight with Gagarin. But should he in the same sense that Robert Falcon Scottis remembered jointly with Roald Amtmdsen, who beat him to the South Pole by 34 days? (Scott's legacy was bolstered because he died on the return trip, left wonderftiUy poignant diaries, and was a darling of imperial England.)Glenn's upcoming flight aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery has been criticized both as the ultimate ego trip and as a payback by the Clinton administration for his obstructionist role in congressional campaign-finance hearings. Perhaps. But 1 don't care. For my generation, which experienced "Glenn, Act I" as impressionable young adults, "Glenn, Act 11" brings back vivid memories of the acute tension and electrifying excitement that surrounded those first manned latmches. (Act II also affirms that we're not yet completely over the hill!)When NASA announced Glenn's flight, it touted it as advancing research on aging, a popular political buzzword these days. Contrived? Emphatically yes and no, depending on who's giving an expert opinion. Whatever the motive, an immediate benefit should be to break down any age restriction on space travel.Glenn's flight is ironic in that after the Challenger debacle, he railed against NASA's poUcy of allowing civilians to go into space. 1 guess a U.S. senator and former Marine isn't a civilian like the rest of us.I've long wondered what the U.S. space program would have become had, say, Alan Shepard's or Glenn's flight blown up. Would we have had a long "hold" on manned flight? Would the Soviet Union have dominated space and the world? Or would the world have ended up pretty much as it is now?Glenn lobbied NASA for two years to get his flight. 1 hope he enjoys the second trip of a lifetime, even though its impact is certain to be a mere shadow of his first.RS. After drafting this reflection, I read in the Boston Globe that John Kennedy was also concerned about a space-flight fatality. Among recently released documents is a diary entry by his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln. Apropos Shepard's suborbital flight, she wrote that Kennedy was "afi-aid of the reaction of the public in case there is a mishap in the firing."