Hero of yesteryear,
Hope for the future

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NASA hopes flight brings new glory days

Sunday, September 20, 1998

BY CAMERON McWHIRTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The original seven astronauts gather during training at Langley Research Center in March 1961. (AP file photo) | ZOOM |

It reads like a Hollywood script about an all-American hero, starring Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks.

A 40-year-old man from a small Ohio farm town becomes the first American to orbit the world, in a cramped capsule on Feb. 20, 1962. His trip makes him an instant national hero.

Thirty-six years later, on Oct. 29, 1998, the same man, now a 77-year-old retiring U.S. senator, heads back to orbit as part of the crew on an ultramodern space shuttle.

The big question for NASA is: Will this script, starring John Glenn, work for the American public, or will viewers yawn and flip the channel?

At the dawn of the Space Age, Americans were united in an obsession with space. President Kennedy laid out a specific goal for the American manned space program in a speech on May 25, 1961.

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," he said. "No single space project in this period will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

From the beginning, the American effort at manned space flight has been punctuated by exhilarating highs like then-Lt. Col. Glenn's successful orbit of the Earth. The effort by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been dominated by the loftiest of goals: human exploration of the infinite frontier of outer space.

THEN

Mercury Year: 1962 Spacecraft name: Friendship 7 Size: 6 feet, 10 inches long; 6 feet, 2.5 inches diameter. Mounted on an Atlas rocket. Crew capacity: One Crew area: 36 cubic feet Total spacecraft weight: 4,256 pounds Thrust at lift-off: 360,000 pounds. Maximum g-force: 7.7 Gs. Launch date: Feb. 20, 1962 Flight duration: 4 hours, 55 mins, 23 sec.

But the program also has been plagued by disaster, lack of direction, spotty funding and fluctuating public support.

Now NASA has turned back to one of its earliest stars: John Glenn.

Advocates of manned space flight strongly support the sequel mission and the attending publicity. They hope Mr. Glenn's second flight will be a touchstone -- like his first mission -- drawing broad public support for space exploration. Many, however, see it as more publicity stunt than hard science. But that's OK with supporters.

"It's got to be about national pride and public relations," said Pamela Mack, a history professor and expert on the space program at Clemson University in South Carolina.

"It can't just be pure science. As a nation, we need this Christopher Columbus thing to support the space program. We want heroes."

After NASA announced Mr. Glenn would be returning to space, the senator released a statement that he was "privileged and honored" to have been chosen.

"However, whatever my own personal feelings are, the mission is only justifiable if it serves a larger scientific and public interest," he stated.

Sen. Glenn's flight could play a crucial role in marshalling public opinion for NASA's future goals -- an international permanent space station, travel to Mars and exploration beyond.

But the mission might have little impact on a public swimming in high-tech gadgetry from cell phones to cable and no longer worried about the Cold War.

The flight has little chance of surpassing the wild enthusiasm when an awed nation turned its eyes to the skies and cheered.

Thanks to computers, worldwide e-mail and computer-imaged sci-fi movies, technology no longer intimidates us as it did in 1962, according to Professor Mack. Today the astronaut is viewed by many Americans as something more akin to a high-tech bus driver than an extraterrestrial Indiana Jones, said Ms. Mack. Orbiting the Earth has become relatively common.

"Will it still play? I'm afraid it will play a whole lot less," Ms. Mack said.

John Glenn blasts off from what was then Cape Canaveral in 1962. (File photo) | ZOOM |

First flight

The importance of Lt. Col. Glenn's 1962 flight to an anxious American public cannot be underestimated.

His flight earned a bold two-line headline stripped across the front of the Enquirer, similar to bold headlines across the world, on Wednesday, Feb. 21, 1962.

"Kennedy to Make Canaveral Trip To Give Glenn Nation's Thanks"

Below, a large photograph of a smiling Lt. Col. Glenn, leaning back in a chair. The political cartoon by L.D. Warren inside had the Statue of Liberty holding up a space capsule marked "GLENN" instead of a torch. The caption read "Space Beacon." Lt. Col. Glenn did meet the president, as well as Congress and millions of Americans in parades and rallies.

The Cold War had the nation on edge. Soviet leaders made it clear they planned to "bury" capitalism with socialism's advanced technology and politics. They held up their successes in space as examples of superiority.

The first shock to America's pride had come in October 1957, when the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik, a small radio satellite.

NOW

Shuttle Spacecraft name: Discovery Size: 184 feet long, 76 feet high, 78 feet wide at wingtips. Mounted on two solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank. Crew capacity: Seven Crew area: 2,325 cubic feet Total spacecraft weight: 153,819 pounds Thrust at lift-off: 7.3 million pounds. Maximum g-force: 3 Gs Launch date: Oct. 29, 1998 Flight duration: 8 days, 20 hours.

From that point, the United States was perceived as behind in what the press labeled a "space race." Sen. John Kennedy, campaigning for the presidency in 1959, declared that the Republican administration had let a "space gap" develop.

On April 12, 1961, public alarm bells rang again when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth. In the context of Communism in Cuba and growing tensions in Southeast Asia, the space race took on further importance.

"Everyone did freak out," said Anthony Curtis, an assistant dean at the Union Institute in Mount Auburn and the author of numerous books on space exploration, including Space: A Visual History of Manned Spaceflight and The Space Almanac.

"It was significant in the competitiveness of the Cold War," he said. "It was important for the United States to show it had technology to rival the Soviet Union. We were the self-described leaders of the Free World."

One of the first steps toward the goal of exploring space was under way when Mr. Kennedy spoke his now famous words in 1961 about going to the moon.

Project Mercury was set up in 1959 by the newly formed NASA with the goal of getting a single astronaut in a small, bell-shaped capsule into orbit and safely back to earth.

After numerous test rockets without passengers and with monkeys and apes, astronaut Alan Shepard Jr. became the first American in space in 1961. The flight was less than an orbit.

Lt. Col. Glenn's was the first American flight to actually circle the Earth. His capsule, Friendship 7, orbited the globe three times -- the most anyone had ever done at that time -- before it dropped back to Earth and splashed down in the Atlantic, where it was picked up by a U.S. Navy ship.

"It was quite a day," he told the press on Feb. 21. "I don't know what you say about a day in which you see four sunsets, three in orbit and one on the ship."

Glenn holds a 1/100th scale model of the space shuttle and a 1/10th model of his Friendship 7 craft. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

From Mercury to the shuttle

After Lt. Col. Glenn's flight, the American space program gathered momentum throughout the 1960s, at least in the public eye. NASA followed the one-person capsule Mercury program with Gemini, a two-person capsule. Next came Apollo, a three-person capsule program.

Meanwhile, the Soviet space program continued at a fevered pace. The Soviets were the first to walk in space, and they were continually putting cosmonauts in orbit.

The Apollo program experienced a major tragedy in January 1967, when Apollo 1 caught fire during a ground test. The three astronauts on board -- Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee -- were killed.

Despite the disaster, the program continued and Apollo reached its goal on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, muttering his famous remark: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

The Soviets had their own problems. Although they did not go to the moon, they were putting cosmonauts into space stations orbiting the globe. In 1971, three of their cosmonauts suffocated on their descent to Earth in Soyuz 11.

In America, after several Apollo lunar landings, NASA shifted its focus to development of the space shuttle, a reusable space craft designed to orbit the Earth and return. Many believe that the shift derailed the space program because they felt NASA had lost a specific goal. Budget cuts and a recession didn't help.

"For NASA, Apollo was the glory days because there was a clear goal and there was enough money," Ms. Mack said. "It's hard to define the goal now because there hasn't been enough money."

Today, almost 30 years after the landing on the moon, NASA has several shuttles that can circle the Earth, but that's all they can do. These shuttles could not get to the moon, let alone land on it, if NASA wanted. We have the knowledge of how to get to the moon, we just haven't invested in the technology.

Mr. Curtis of the Union Institute said the shuttle concept just didn't spark the public imagination.

"It was a period of public disinterest after Apollo," he said. "I give credit to NASA for just plowing ahead with very little money."

But Roger D. Launius, NASA's chief historian, said in fact NASA's fiscal problems began even before Apollo began. The administration's budget was being cut since 1965, long before the first Apollo launches, he said. NASA's budget hit a low point in 1974 and then rose, and has now leveled off.

NASA's shuttle also had tragedy. On Jan. 28, 1986, the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after take-off, killing all on board including the civilian elementary school teacher Christa McAuliffe.

The disaster stopped shuttle flights.

The shuttle has been referred to derogatorily as a "space truck," hauling material and experiments into orbit. They also are used for service calls on our world's many satellites -- descendants of Sputnik that provide the ubiquitous technology we now take for granted, from telephone calls to high-tech spying.

NASA has contracted for a new generation of re-usable spacecraft that will look somewhat like the shuttle and but still will not have the capacity for long-range space travel.

But NASA has bigger plans too. The agency is committed to helping to build an international space station to orbit the Earth. The agency also has launched several unmanned probes to Mars and beyond. A manned flight to Mars is being discussed as a possibility.

Mr. Launius said the task for NASA has become to convince the public, and their elected officials, that funding NASA is an "investment in the future" as important as funding Social Security, the military, road constructions and other pressing matters.

Improving our technology, and committing to space exploration must be as important as terrestrial needs.

"The defining thing about American civilization is that we are the most technologically advanced civilization that has ever existed," he said.

The size of the NASA budget is, like space itself, relative. The 1997 budget was $13.7 billion, about 0.8 percent of the overall federal budget. By comparison, the military budget is more than $250 billion.

Glenn gives a thumbs up as he prepares to take off in a T-38 jet for a training flight. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

Old hat or New Frontier

The new flight is seen by most in the space field as an attempt by NASA to harken back to its heyday, when a hero was simple and a "successful" mission was considered heroism.

Although Sen. Glenn was only added to the flight crew in January, the scheduled mission has quickly come to be seen by the public as "Glenn's mission."

"Everybody knows it as the John Glenn shuttle mission. It has a formal name, STS-95, but nobody knows it as that," said Mr. Launius.

Public support for the mission has been overwhelming, with Sen. Glenn's flight web sites receiving hundreds of thousands of hits and his office being barraged with calls. Veteran news anchor Walter Cronkite, who covered the first flight in 1962, has announced he will come out of retirement to cover the second flight.

But the mission is not without its critics.

Robert Zubrin, author of The Case for Mars, which advocates that NASA work on a manned mission to the Red Planet, described Sen. Glenn's mission as "a little jaunt."

"While Glenn's first flight was an important milestone in our entry into space, the second flight seems to be basically PR," he said.

Mr. Zubrin, an engineer who has worked for decades on various NASA projects, believes NASA should be spending its money on going to Mars, not shuttling around the Earth.

"The real issue is that NASA still performs the same tricks over and over again," he said. "Now we'll do it with John Glenn, next Meg Ryan. There are a lot of interesting people we could send up to orbit the Earth. That's not what it's about. What it should be about is opening new frontiers. Mars is next. Mars has been staring NASA in the face ever since Apollo ended. It's about pushing the envelope."

Robert Pearlman, spokesman for the National Space Society, a lobbying group promoting space exploration that counts Sen. Glenn as a board member, said "pushing the envelope" is all well and good, but NASA has envelopes it can push, including the age barrier.

He said the upcoming Glenn mission is "a real step of opening the frontier to the general public" simply because Sen. Glenn is "not a stereotypical astronaut, because he is a senior citizen. Before his flight the typical I-want-to-be-an-astronaut letter to us came from 12-year-olds. Now that's not the case."

In the 1970s and 1980s, "NASA's goals got a little fuzzy," Mr. Pearlman said. "But now we're seeing it coming back. NASA is truly committed to building this international space station and this mission in many ways is the most important mission ever attempted by the human race. It is the beginning of helping all kinds of people get into space. From what we learn there, we can explore the moon, Mars and beyond."

Jay Huebner, a physics professor at the University of North Florida at Jacksonville who teaches a course on "the Colonization of Space," said the upcoming flight might not cause as much of a stir as the 1962 flight, but it will spark Americans to view space as a frontier that can and should be explored by people of all ages.

"It's not going to open new territory. But it broadens the perspective on what people can go there. It will make it clear that space is not just for young people," said Mr. Huebner, 59, a former rocket engineer who said he has always viewed Sen. Glenn as a hero.

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