posted 02-18-2002 08:44 PM               

I had been working very long hours with a bunch of very dedicated people trying to have a successful launch. I was in charge of Atlas Telemetry Quality, Telemetry Data processing and Evaluation at Hangar J on Cape Canaveral.

I had graduated from the University of Florida in Electrical Engineering three and a half years earlier and was 32 years of age. At 32, I was four years older than the average employee.

One disadvantage of the work I did was that we had to be on station for the pre-countdown telemetry checkout and stay after launch to get the +6 hour report out. This kept me away from the launch parties, I am probably better off now but at the time I hated missing the parties.

posted 02-20-2002 05:47 PM               

As stated I was only one of many dedicated people that worked very hard to make the launch a success.

posted 02-19-2010 09:01 PM               

Friendship 7: Opening a New Era in Space

Forty-eight years ago, on Feb. 20, 1962, NASA astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth when an Atlas rocket successfully carried his Friendship 7 capsule into space. Glenn's three orbits of the planet ushered in a new era in space travel, paving the way for the Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon.

posted 02-20-2010 08:58 AM               

He wasn't born during Glenn's flight or Shepard's, so he didn't live it... I was only 2 so I had trouble answering it. But he asked me why Glenn seems to be so much better known, historically, than Shepard.

He said he remembered learning and hearing more about Glenn growing up. He thought since Shepard was the first American to fly in space, Shepard should "trump" Glenn in being remembered.

posted 02-20-2010 09:47 AM               

1. The orbital flight was longer and involved more piloting skill and thus more dramatic in the public eye.
   
2. Glenn was more of an American hero-type than Shepard's personality.
   
3. His is in the spotlight more due to his political career and that he has lived longer.

posted 02-20-2010 11:15 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by dss65:
When heroes were still heroes -- and still are to this day!

---

We have tremendous capability on orbit. If you look at the space station, I think a lot of people don't really realize what we have in orbit and how it got there. At the same time I would tell you that we are still in our infancy relative to working even in low Earth orbit.

I have mentioned this before, this team from coast to coast and the international team where the space station is concerned, if you look at the shuttle missions alone, if you look at the shuttle-station docked missions, we've gotten to the point where the performance of the vehicles is so good and the team understands the job and the tasks and the preparation is so good that we make it look easy. The team makes it look easy, to the extent that it concerns me because then people actually begin to think it is easy and that couldn't be farther from the truth.

It takes an extreme amount of vigilance to be able to pull off these missions: The preparation of the team as individuals and organizationally, the training that is required; the planning that is required to put together the time lines and the execution of the mission; and then you have all the hardware preparation, the payloads, the cargo, not to mention the vehicle flight elements, the orbiters, the SRBs and RSRMS, and the tanks, all of that coming together in Florida a couple of months before the launch, and being assembled and processed and rolled out and checked out; the teams on the ground with their respective training and planning and preparation that they go through -- it is highly complex. It takes the type of team we have right now, a highly professional, very talented, very, very dedicated, extremely resilient team to be able to do this and we have a team like that right now and you see that demonstrated pretty clear in these missions that we have executed over the past several years.

But it isn't easy and it is not routine by any means and we have a long way to go I think as a space-faring nation, as a space-faring population if you will, before anything becomes routine, whether it is low Earth orbit or beyond. So, it is all kind of relative. Certainly we have made great strides and I think we are extremely proud of the space station. I think in a lot of ways it will be one of the, if not the premiere legacy of the space shuttle, the space station will certainly be a significant part of the legacy of the space shuttle. Folks that have worked on station and shuttle are extremely proud of that, as well they should be.

But we have some work left to do and everyday we are here we are focused on the challenges that are associated with that work and then we get to enjoy the successes that we have from one mission to the next. As I said earlier, we're very focused on getting Endeavour home safely, and that it won't be very long after that that we will be very focused on getting Discovery put together and launched back to space station and then the mission after that and so on and so forth. But it's not routine.

posted 02-23-2010 02:05 PM               

As noted above he was on the Transcontinental record trip but shortly after was on several episodes of "Name That Tune" with Eddy Hodges who becanme a Broadway Child Star.

This was a very popular program and I knew well of Glenn from that.

As far as being a "Star" figure, let me illustrate. In the summer of 1963 (JFK's last summer) I was a Summer Intern at the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. Each week several thousand summer student interns were bused from all over to downtown DC to hear a variety of public figures including Averell Harriman, Bobby Kennedy, Adali Stevenson, a few others and finally JFK on the South Lawn of the White House. Heady times, but the bigeest deal was hearing John Glenn!!!

I still have the newspaper clipping from the Post covering his speech. I sent it to Mr Glenn a few yers ago and he autograpjhed it. A prize possession.

posted 02-15-2012 08:38 AM               

In the winter of 1962, the nation needed a hero.

Americans had yet to recover from the Soviet Union's launching of the first spacecraft, Sputnik, in October 1957 — a rude jolt to our confidence as world leaders in all things technological. The space race was on.

Soon after he took office in 1961, President John F. Kennedy had thrown down the challenge to send men to the Moon by the end of the decade. But the Russians still set the pace, boastfully. They launched a dog into orbit, then the first man, Yuri A. Gagarin, and another, Gherman S. Titov.

The United States lagged, managing only two 15-minute suborbital astronaut flights — only five minutes of weightlessness each time.

Then, on Feb. 20, 1962 — 50 years ago next Monday — a Marine Corps fighter pilot from small-town America stepped forward in response to the country's need. The astronaut was John Glenn, whom the author Tom Wolfe has called "the last true national hero America has ever had."

posted 02-16-2012 06:23 AM               

One thing I strongly remember was my father owned a small, two man heavy construction equipment (bulldozers) repair business and had a shop in the back yard. He was an immigrant from Germany and got his citizenship during WWII after being in the country illegally having "jumped ship" off a four masted square rigger from the German Merchant Marine back in the early 1920's. The term "illegal alien" has a different meaning for me.

He came into the house to watch the launch just before liftoff. As I sat there absolutely mesmerized at the launch unfolding on the black and white TV screen in our living room, the excitement and hopes of this normally quiet unassuming man could not be contained as he sat there cheerfully saying as the rocket reached for the heavens... "go... go baby go"!

posted 02-16-2012 01:17 PM               

I was a year away from Kindergarten. My mom said I was holding a toy rocket high in the air all day asking every now and then, "Did he spashdown yet?" Had the old arm up there even through lunch. Didn't bring it down until the mission was over.

posted 02-17-2012 07:07 PM               

John Glenn, first American in orbit, reflects on his flight's 50-year legacy

Fifty years ago Monday (Feb. 20), John Glenn made history circling the Earth three times.

He wasn't the first person in space, nor the first American. He wasn't even the first person to orbit the planet. But Glenn's five-hour flight onboard Friendship 7 set him apart from the space travelers who launched before him and established a lasting legacy that outshone many of those who followed.

posted 02-19-2012 10:11 AM               

For half a century, the world has applauded John Glenn as a heart-stirring American hero. He lifted the nation's spirits when, as one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, he was blasted alone into orbit around the Earth; the enduring affection for him is so powerful that even now people find themselves misting up at the sight of his face or the sound of his voice.

But for all these years, Glenn has had a hero of his own, someone who he has seen display endless courage of a different kind:

Annie Glenn.

posted 02-20-2012 06:59 AM               

The DJ was obviously not alive 50 years ago but he proceeded to talk accurately and passionately about Gagarin, Shepard, and Grissom. He described Glenn's launch vehicle, flight, and Friendship 7 in detail and elaborated for maybe 90 seconds (an eternity on morning radio). Then he played two space themed rock songs.

When he came back he started talking to "youngsters" about why space exploration was such a big deal 50 years ago and should be today. He recommended they read about the Space Race and if they didn't want to read then watch The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and From the Earth to the Moon. He talked about the TV, newspapers, and magazine coverage and the parade. He talked about Glenn's shuttle flight.

posted 02-20-2012 01:24 PM               

"One of my fondest memories of John Glenn's flight came from a box of Red Ball Jets," Don Pettit, one of two NASA astronauts now on board the International Space Station (ISS), told collectSPACE. "Red Ball Jets were a particular brand of tennis shoes that kids loved to wear. They had a little red sticker on the side that would fall off after about the first week, but they were really cool shoes."

"In this particular box of Red Ball Jets was one of these really flimsy vacuum formed records. And that record was a soundtrack recording of John Glenn describing what the Earth looked like during one of his orbits. I remember that as a kid," Pettit said.

While I don't remember "the little sticker" that fell off from the side after a week or two that was observed in the article, the Red Ball Jets I remember had a little red rubber ball emblem/logo as part of the shoe on the back. I think it shows up on that booklet shown in the article.

I remember the booklet clearly and the little plastic 45-rpm sized record that came bound in the booklet, like the Apollo 11 record more of you are familiar with in the National Geographic issue of December, 1969.

The Ball Band record was white. The back of the Ball Band booklet had pictures of the Original Seven astronauts on it.

Man, if you were a kid in South Bend-Mishawaka in the 50's and 60's you HAD to have a pair of Red Ball Jets!

posted 02-21-2012 11:16 AM               

Among the amusing anecdotes Glenn recalled in his National Air and Space Museum lecture was the letter mailed to him by a grade schooler who was writing a bio on an historical figure, adding at the end that (paraphrasing) "...you are the only one alive; please respond as soon as possible." Glenn then said his reply was the fastest one on record!

He also took out a memento of his flight, a mouse toy dangling on the end of a string. Comic Bill Dana, known for his Jose Jimenez "reluctant astronaut" routine back then, often thought of himself as a "leetle mouse" sitting atop a massive rocket. Glenn said the prank had Al Shepard's name all over it.

posted 02-21-2012 11:26 AM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by onesmallstep:
He also took out a memento of his flight, a mouse toy dangling on the end of a string.

---

We had little practical jokes that were going on back and forth between the astronauts, the seven of us at that time.

Al Shepard — I had been his backup and put some stuff [in his spacecraft] before the suborbital flight — and when I got up and hit orbit and reached over and pulled the Velcro fastener that kept some of the equipment held down during launch, the first thing that came floating up out of there was a little felt mouse.

Just a tiny little felt mouse about two inches long, with a huge long tail, about a foot long tail. And the foot long tail was tied down inside the case. And I knew who did it, I knew Al Shepard had done that.

I still have that little mouse.

posted 02-21-2012 12:33 PM               

It was a different expression from what he had at liftoff as his eyes looked a little wider and a bit more at attention (like the look a pilot gets when he knows he has to concentrate). I might not necessarily say it was "fear" but it was a look of concern about things.

The footage of Glenn's recovery on the USS Noa was also nice. Here you've got a ship which is part of the recovery forces, but they maybe aren't expecting to be the ones tasked with the recovery since they are on the northern edge of the recovery zone. But, Friendship 7 comes plopping down nearby and they have to go pick him up. You can tell it certainly made the sailors' day when they realized they were going to be more of a part of history than just being on the fringes of it since destroyer assignments don't command the prestige of a big ship like a carrier. Seeing Glenn just lounging around on a chair near the fantail waiting for helicopter pickup to take him to the carrier was pretty neat as well. He sort of looked like a passenger on a cruise ship, just enjoying a quiet moment before the hustle and bustle began again.