Frendship 7
On the morning of February 20, 1962, millions of Americans collectively held
their breath as the world's newest pioneer swept across the threshold of one of
man's last frontiers. Roughly a hundred miles above their heads, astronaut John
Glenn sat comfortably in the weightless environment of a 9 1/2-by-6-foot space
capsule he called Friendship 7. Within these close quarters he worked
through his flight plan and completed an array of technical and medical tests as
he cruised through the heavens.
It offered the leg room of a Volkswagen 'Beetle' and the aesthetics of a
garbage can, but the small capsule commanded an extraordinary view of the planet
Earth. Through the craft's window, Glenn saw thick, puffy, white clouds
blanketing much of southern Africa and the Indian Ocean. The Atlas Mountains of
North Africa stood like proud, majestic statues on a planet that seemed as
timeless as the stars that twinkled an eternity away. Dust storms blew across
the deserts, and smoke from brush fires swirled into the atmosphere.
'Oh, that view is tremendous,' Glenn remarked over the radio to capsule
communicator (Capcom) Alan Shepard, his fellow Mercury astronaut stationed back
at mission control. As Friendship 7 passed over the Indian Ocean, Glenn
witnessed his first sunset from space, a panorama of beautiful, brilliant
colors. Before the conclusion of that historic day, he would witness a total of
four sunsets–three while in earth orbit, and the fourth from the deck of his
recovery ship.
For Glenn, the historic voyage of Friendship 7 remains as vivid today
as if it had happened yesterday. People still ask him what it felt like to be
the first American to orbit the earth. And often he thinks of his capsule's
breathtaking liftoff and those subtle, emotionally empowering sunrises and
sunsets.
'Here on earth you see a sunrise, it's golden, it's orange,' Glenn recalled
recently. 'When you're in space, and you're coming around on a sunset or
sunrise, where the light comes to you refracted through the earth's atmosphere
and back out into space, to the space craft that refraction has the same glowing
color for all the colors of the spectrum . . . .'
There have been more than ten thousand sunsets since his orbital flight
helped launch the United States deeper into a space race with the former Soviet
Union. And although Glenn's political career as a Democratic senator from Ohio
has kept him in the public eye, he is remembered by many of his countrymen as
the first American to circle the planet and as the affable spokesman for the
seven Mercury astronauts.
Glenn marvels at how people all over the world still recall the heady days of
the Mercury program. 'It's been heartwarming in some respects and it's amazing
in others,' he says. 'I don't go around all day, saying 'Don't you want to hear
about my space experience?' Quite the opposite. But if the kids come to the
office here, or if I run into them on the subway and they want to stop a minute,
I don't hesitate to stop and talk. I think it's good; I think that's a duty we
[former astronauts] have.'
By the time Glenn and Friendship 7 burst through the earth's
atmosphere, the United States was already a distant second in space technology,
behind the Soviet Union. The race to begin to explore the universe had
unofficially begun on October 4, 1957, when the Soviets launched Sputnik
I, the world's first artificial satellite.
'I think Sputnik sort of forced the hand,' explains Gene Kranz, who served as
Project Mercury's assistant flight director and section chief for flight control
operations. 'I think we found ourselves an embarrassing second in space and
related technologies. We were second best, and Americans generally don't like
that kind of a role.'
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, was more concerned about the
country's security than its self-esteem. With the Soviets having the rocket
power to propel a satellite into space, he wondered how long it would be before
they were capable of launching a nuclear bomb toward the United States. In
response to this perceived Soviet threat, Eisenhower signed the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) into being on July 29, 1958. One of
the first assignments given to the new agency was to launch a man into space and
return him safely to earth, and that fall, Project Mercury was created to
fulfill that daunting task.
On April 9, 1959, NASA formally introduced to the world the seven test pilots
who would, it was hoped, carry the U.S. banner to the heavens. Selected were:
Lieutenant Commanders Malcolm Scott Carpenter, Walter Marty Schirra, and Alan B.
Shepard of the Navy; Air Force captains Leroy Gordon Cooper, Virgil I. 'Gus'
Grissom, and Donald 'Deke' Slayton; and Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn of the
Marine Corps.
Born on July 18, 1921, Glenn was the oldest of the group, arguably the most
celebrated, and an obvious candidate for Mercury from the beginning. A veteran
of World War II and the Korean War, Glenn had flown 149 combat missions and been
awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross five times. After completing test-pilot
school in 1954, Glenn went to work testing the fastest jets America could
produce. His rsum sparkled even more in 1957 after he set a transcontinental
speed record for the first flight to average supersonic speed (seven hundred
miles per hour) from Los Angeles to New York.
From their first public appearance together, the Mercury 7 astronauts, as
they came to be known, were celebrities and heroes. 'We were at first extremely
surprised when we were announced to the whole world, and how crazy everybody
went over the whole thing,' laughs Cooper.
But enthusiasm for the project was one thing; making it a success was more
difficult. There were countless variables and unknowns to conquer:
weightlessness, a new capsule, an inconsistent booster in the Atlas rocket, and
of course, the awesome specter of space. 'To put it bluntly, we didn't know what
we were doing in many areas of the Mercury program and we were fortunate our
country understood there was no achievement without risk,' admits Kranz.
As the Mercury project evolved and moved into the next decade, NASA found a
crucial supporter in President John F. Kennedy. Just weeks into his term,
however, the Soviets scored another technological coup. On April 2, 1961, Soviet
Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space, orbiting the
earth once during his one hour, forty-eight minute flight, which came just three
months after a U.S. Redstone rocket had carried a chimp named Ham into space and
brought him safely back.
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard made America's first, manned suborbital voyage,
flying for 15 minutes and reaching an altitude of 116 miles. Compared to
Gagarin's flight around the world, Shepard's 302-mile mission was a mere
stopover between ports of call. It was, however, a major boost to America's
pride. While Gagarin flew under a cloak of secrecy, Shepard's flight was
broadcast live on television.
The early success of the Mercury Program spurred President Kennedy to inspire
NASA to reach for new heights. On May 25, he grabbed the world's attention when
he told Congress that the nation's new goal was to complete a manned trip to the
moon before the end of the decade. For the first time in its space duel with the
Soviet Union, the United States, which had so far amassed just 15 minutes of
manned space-flight time, had set the stakes. Gene Kranz recalls with a laugh
that '. . . we thought he was crazy,' but the astronauts also felt energized to
meet the new challenge.
NASA turned its efforts up a notch that summer. In July, Gus Grissom
replicated Shepard's short suborbital flight, and by the fall, NASA was ready to
attempt putting a spacecraft in orbit. As a final test in preparation for a
manned trip, a chimpanzee named Enos was launched into space in late November.
The craft carrying Enos completed two orbits before landing safely back on
earth, after which NASA announced that on December 20 of that year, John Glenn
would make the first American orbital flight.
Before taking this next giant leap toward the moon, however, NASA had to
ensure that an astronaut could function in a weightless environment for an
extended period of time. Some scientists feared that without proper equipment
and technology, a space traveler's eyeballs would bulge out of their sockets and
change shape. This, in turn, would distort his vision and preclude his flying
the craft should any of the automatic controls fail. Also, scientists feared
that fluid in the inner ear might float freely into the air and that Glenn would
become so nauseated and disoriented that he would be unable to perform his
tasks.
In addition to its concerns about Glenn's adaptability to weightlessness,
NASA worried about the inconsistent Atlas booster, the huge rocket designed to
push Glenn's ship into orbit. Two of the five unmanned test firings conducted on
the 93-foot Atlas prior to Glenn's mission had failed. The memory of one of
those failures has remained vivid for Glenn. It was a night test, he remembers,
'and it was very dramatic–searchlights and a beautiful starlit night. Not a
cloud in the sky. They light this thing, and up she goes . . . . At about 27,000
feet it blew up right over our heads. It looked like an atom bomb went off right
there.'
To add to the mounting tension, poor weather and mechanical problems with the
rocket forced NASA to'scrub' Glenn's scheduled mission nine times. Finally, on
February 20, 1962, seven months after America's last manned flight, John Glenn
would don his bulky pressure suit for what would be the final time.
Rising out of bed in his 'ready room' at NASA's space craft center at Cape
Canaveral, Florida, at 2:20 a.m., he checked the weather report, which indicated
a fifty percent chance of rain. Glenn showered and shaved and had the customary
astronaut's breakfast of steak and eggs, before taking a pre-flight physical. If
the many weeks of anticipation weighed on Glenn's mind, his body did not reflect
it.
Four hours later, Glenn made the short ride to the rocket's launch site. When
he emerged from the transfer van, Launch Pad 14 resembled a movie set as giant
floodlights waved streams of milky white upon the rocket and the surrounding
area. The huge Atlas was a glowing silver sword in the coal black night. 'My
flight was–it was like you staged it,' recalls Glenn. 'It was
Hollywoodesque.'
Two hours before his scheduled liftoff, Glenn squeezed into the cramped cabin
of Friendship 7, perched atop the Atlas rocket. The sky was clearing, and
just before 8:00 a.m. technicians began the laborious task of bolting on the
entry hatch of the craft. Sealed inside the capsule, Glenn felt truly alone. The
minutes ticked by slowly as he calmly and methodically worked through his
preflight checklist. Finally, Glenn heard the flight team give his mission an
'A-OK' over the radio. With all systems functioning normally, Glenn acknowledged
his preparedness with a firm 'ready.' As the final countdown to liftoff began,
backup pilot Scott Carpenter's voice crackled over Glenn's radio: 'Godspeed,
John Glenn.'
At 9:47 a.m. the rocket's three engines ignited. Friendship 7 began to
vibrate as the mighty Atlas built up 350,000 pounds of thrust, the force needed
to lift Glenn and his craft into orbit. For a few interminable seconds, the
massive rocket held steady. Finally, its hold-down clamps released, and the
Atlas slowly, agonizingly clutched and pulled at the bright blue sky. 'We are
under way,' Glenn reported to Mercury Control.
Minutes later, Glenn was a hundred miles above the earth and traveling at
more than 17,000 miles per hour. With all systems running smoothly during his
initial orbit, Control advised him that he 'had a go' for at least seven turns
around the earth. Unlike Soviet Cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who had experienced
nausea and dizziness during his recent 16-orbit flight, Glenn worked and ate
without difficulty. As he gazed earthward through the capsule's window, he noted
how fragile the planet appeared, shielded from the unforgiving vacuum of space
by a film of atmosphere that seemed no more dense than an eggshell.
Back at Mercury Control, the flight team, headed by Chris Kraft and Kranz,
kept their focus on more practical considerations. After Glenn's first orbit,
Control had received a telemetry signal indicating that his capsule's heat
shield might be loose. If that signal was correct, Glenn and the spacecraft
would disintegrate in the three-thousand-degree heat generated by reentry into
Earth's atmosphere. There seemed to be only one solution to this potentially
tragic problem. If Glenn refrained from jettisoning the ship's retro-rocket
package, a normal procedure just before reentry, its titanium straps might hold
the shield in place. Control advised Glenn of their decision to end his flight
and ordered him to plan for reentry after his third orbit.
Unwilling to burden Glenn with concern over the possible heat-shield
malfunction, Control offered no explanation for their decision until he was
safely home. Glenn was suspicious, but all parts of Friendship 7 seemed
to him to be working properly so he concerned himself only with what was within
his control. Before long, the capsule splashed down safely in the Atlantic
Ocean.
'When I started back in through the atmosphere, when the straps that held the
retropack on burned off, one of them popped up in front of the window,' Glenn
remembers. 'I thought the retropack or the heat shield was breaking up. It was a
real fireball. But the heat shield worked fine.'
Glenn's flight was a public relations boon for the U.S. space program. He
returned to a hero's welcome and a wildly emotional New York City ticker-tape
parade. The United States had made a significant step forward in its competition
with the Soviet Union and its quest for the moon. Few people knew, however, that
the nation's most famous pilot would never again fly in space.
As Glenn recalls, 'President Kennedy had passed word to NASA, and I didn't
know this for some years, that I was not to be used again on a flight, at least
for a while. You can't believe being the focal point of that kind of attention
when we came back. I don't know if he was concerned about political fallout, or
what.' Glenn was disappointed that he never again traveled into space, but
declares,'I don't feel cheated because I had such a tremendous flight.'
Three years after the confetti and streamers had blown away, John Glenn left
NASA and, relegating space flight to a vivid memory, moved into another public
arena. Politics is a high-profile world in which Glenn's clean-cut image and
amiable personality easily endeared him to his constituents and to the public in
general. In 1974, he was elected to the U.S. Senate by his home state of Ohio,
an office he has held through three more terms.
Despite the passage of more than a quarter century, Glenn easily recalls the
innocent joy he found in those wondrous space sunsets. He has never lost the
ability to draw inspiration from his experiences and to channel it into a
positive outlook. 'I think its an attitude,' he says, of maintaining his inner
youth. 'I think kids have an expectation of what's going to happen tomorrow. I
think some people are able to maintain that whole thing, this expectation about
what they're looking forward to.'
Not surprisingly, Senator Glenn can easily find his time consumed by the
business of Capitol Hill. But when a red-headed, freckle-faced teenager with
blue eyes ablaze asks Glenn to describe a launch or splashdown, the senator from
Ohio again becomes one of America's first astronauts, as he relives that
historic day in 1962 when time stood still and three space sunsets blazed like
campfires of a thousand sparkling colors.
