Glenn departs Earth for final time
UNITED STATES: John Glenn, who became one of the 20th century’s greatest explorers as the first American to orbit Earth and later as the world’s oldest astronaut, and also had a long career as a US senator, died in Ohio yesterday at age 95.
The last surviving member of the original seven American ‘‘Right Stuff’’ Mercury astronauts, died at the James Cancer Hospital at Ohio State University in Columbus, said Hank Wilson, a spokesman at the university’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs, which Glenn helped found.
Glenn was credited with reviving US pride after the Soviet Union’s early domination of manned space exploration. His three laps around the world in the Friendship 7 capsule on February 20, 1962, forged a powerful link between the former fighter pilot and the Kennedy-era quest to explore outer space as a ‘‘new frontier’’.
President Barack Obama, who in 2012 awarded Glenn the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, said: ‘‘With John’s passing, our nation has lost an icon. When John Glenn blasted off from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas rocket in 1962, he lifted the hopes of a nation,’’ Obama said.
‘‘And when his Friendship 7 spacecraft splashed down a few hours later, the first American to orbit the Earth reminded us that with courage and a spirit of discovery there’s no limit to the heights we can reach together.’’
Glenn’s entry into history came in early 1962 when fellow astronaut Scott Carpenter bade him ‘‘Godspeed, John Glenn’’ just before the Ohio native was rocketed into space for a recordbreaking trip that would last just under five hours.
‘‘’Zero-G [gravity] and I feel fine,’’ was Glenn’s succinct assessment of weightlessness several minutes into his mission.
‘‘Oh, and that view is tremendous.’’
After splashdown and recovery in the Atlantic, Glenn was treated as a hero, addressing a joint session of Congress and feted in a New York ticker-tape parade.
Glenn had been hospitalised since November 25, and ’’died peacefully,’’ his family and Ohio State University said.
‘‘He left this earth for the third time as a happy and fulfilled person. Glenn’s extraordinary courage, intellect, patriotism and humanity were the hallmarks of a life of greatness.
‘‘His missions have helped make possible everything our space programme has since achieved and the human missions to an asteroid and Mars that we are striving toward now,’’ Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden said.
Glenn’s experiences as a pioneer astronaut were chronicled in the book and movie The Right Stuff, along with the other Mercury pilots.
The book’s author, Tom Wolfe, called Glenn ‘‘the last true national hero America has ever had’’.
‘‘I don’t think of myself that way,’’ Glenn said in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of his flight.
‘‘I get up each day and have the same problems others have at my age. As far as trying to analyse all the attention I received, I will leave that to others.’’
Glenn’s historic flight made him a favourite of President John F Kennedy and his brother Robert, who encouraged him to launch a political career that finally took off after a period as a businessman made him a millionaire.
Even before his Mercury flight, Glenn qualified for hero status, earning six Distinguished Flying Crosses and flying more than 150 missions in World War II and the Korean War.
After Korea, Glenn became a test pilot, setting a transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to New York in 1957.
The determination and singlemindedness that marked Glenn’s military and space career did not save him from misjudgments and defeat in politics.
He lost his first bid for the Senate from Ohio in 1970, after abandoning a race in 1964 because of a head injury suffered in a fall.
He was elected in 1974 and was briefly considered as a running mate for Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in 1980.
But a ponderous address at the Democratic National Convention caused Carter to remark that Glenn was ‘‘the most boring man I ever met.’’ - Reuters