FAREWELL TO AN AMERICAN HERO
In 1998 he became the oldest person to travel into space
John Glenn, the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth, dies at the age of 95,
WASHINGTON // He became a hero as the first American to orbit the Earth and then served as a US senator, but John Glenn, who died on Thursday at the age of 95, continued to defy gravity decades after his initial flight.
The last survivor of the Mercury 7 astronauts flew into space again at age 77 so scientists could examine the effects of zero-gravity on an older body. He insisted that his crewmates on the space shuttle Discovery in 1998 call him John – and nothing else.
“He didn’t want any special treatment as a US senator,” said crewmate Scott Parazynski.
John Herschel Glenn Jr, who died at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, had two major career paths that often intersected: flying and politics.
Before he gained fame orbiting the world, he served as a fighter pilot in two wars and, as a test pilot, he set a transcontinental speed record. He later served 24 years as a senator for the state of Ohio. A rare setback was a failed run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984.
In 1998, he resumed his career as an astronaut aboard the Discovery , a cosmic victory lap that he relished and which bestowed on him the record for the oldest person yet sent into space.
In 1957, the Soviet Union leapt ahead in space exploration by putting the Sputnik 1 satellite into orbit, and then launched the first man in space, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in a 108-minute orbital flight on April 12, 1961.
After two suborbital flights by Alan Shepard Jr and Gus Grissom, the honour was given to Glenn to become the first American to orbit the Earth.
“Godspeed, John Glenn,” fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter radioed on February 20, 1962 just before Glenn thundered off a Cape Canaveral launch pad. Glenn was 40 years old at the time. During the four-hour, 55-minute flight, he uttered a phrase that he would repeat frequently throughout life: “Zero G, and I feel fine.”
On the 50th anniversary of the flight, Glenn said: “It still seems so vivid to me. I still can sort of pseudo feel some of those same sensations I had back in those days during launch and all.”
There were frightening moments too in the cramped capsule of the Friendship 7. Sensors showed his heat shield was loose after three orbits, and mission control worried he might burn up during re-entry when temperatures reached 3,000°C. But the heat shield held. Glenn was born on July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio, and grew up in New Concord, Ohio.
From early childhood, flying fascinated him. His father, John Glenn Sr, recalled arriving home on a summer evening to find his son running around the yard with outstretched arms, pretending he was flying an aircraft.
Glenn’s ambition to be a commercial pilot was changed by the Second World War. He left Muskingum College to join the naval air corps and soon after, the marines. As a fighter pilot he flew 59 missions, often as a volunteer or as the requested backup of assigned pilots. Later in the Korean War, he earned the nickname MiG-Mad Marine.
Glenn’s public life began when he broke the transcontinental airspeed record, rocketing from Los Angeles to New York City in three hours, 23 minutes and eight seconds. With his Crusader averaging 1,166.7 kilometres an hour, the 1957 flight proved the jet could endure stress when pushed to maximum speeds over long distances. In New York, he was given a hero’s welcome – his first ticker tape parade. He got another after his flight on Friendship 7.
He first ran for the US senate in 1964 but left the race when he suffered a concussion after slipping in the bathroom and hitting his head. He tried again in 1970 but was defeated in the primary.
For the next four years, Glenn devoted his attention to business and investments that made him a multimillionaire.
In 1974, he ran for the senate again and won. Glenn represented Ohio longer than any other senator in the state’s history. He became an expert on nuclear weaponry and was the senate’s most dogged advocate of non-proliferation.
Glenn said the lowest point of his life was 1990, when he and four senators came under scrutiny for their connections to Charles Keating, the financier who served time in prison for his role in the costly savings and loan failure of the 1980s.
The senate ethics committee cleared Glenn of any serious wrongdoing but said he “exercised poor judgment”.
He announced his retirement in 1997, 35 years to the day after he became the first American in orbit.
In his second flight in 1998, he spent nine days aboard the Discovery 9. Mr Parazynski said flying with Glenn “was like playing basketball with Michael Jordan or doing astrophysics with Albert Einstein. He jumped right in and wanted to be part of everything”.
In 1943, Glenn married his childhood sweetheart, Anna Margaret Castor. They had two children.
Glenn also spent time promoting the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University, which also houses an archive of his private papers and photographs.
No fewer than three presidents and one president- elect were among those who paid tribute to the astronaut.
“When John Glenn blasted off from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas rocket in 1962, he lifted the hopes of a nation … The last of America’s first astronauts has left us, but propelled by their example we know that our future here on Earth compels us to keep reaching for the heavens. On behalf of a grateful nation, Godspeed, John Glenn,” said president Barack Obama. And from someone who understands the pull of space better than most – Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, came the message: “He will always go down in history.”