BY TIM BONFIELD
Cincinnati Enquirer
![[glenn]](/editions/1998/10/08/glennshake_150x188.jpg)
John Glenn shakes hands with Capt George Hoggard of the Kennedy Space Center fire squad after driving an armored personnel carrier.
(Michael E. Keating photo)
| ZOOM |
|
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At T-minus 21 days in the countdown to his historic space shuttle flight, Sen. John Glenn was racing an armored personnel carrier away from the launch pad in an escape drill.
On Wednesday, Mr. Glenn and the other six astronauts of the Discovery crew took turns driving the yellow-green M-113 tracked-vehicle that will be used only if the mission is aborted at the last second because of a looming disaster.
The drill dates to the Apollo missions in the 1960s and early 1970s. Getting out the shuttle hatch, then sliding away from a platform 250 feet high in baskets mounted on half-mile-long wires takes about five minutes, said NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham. That means only certain kinds of emergencies, such as small fires or toxic gas leaks, would give the crew a chance of survival.
On the ground, the crew has a choice. Hide out in a fortified underground bunker or drive away in the M-113. It takes about five minutes at speeds near 40 mph to clear the blast zone. The armored, tracked vehicle is used to offer as much protection and all-weather, all-terrain capability as possible. Each crew member practices driving the M-113 because nobody knows who will be capable of driving in the event of an emergency.
On Friday, after a day of briefing sessions and media appearances, the practice is scheduled to continue. The crew will wriggle into their spacesuits, take a ride in the astronaut van to the launch pad, gather in the "white room" for final checks, climb into the shuttle and strap in.
The crew will practice a T-minus-20-minutes countdown as if everything were real, including an aborted launch scenario that requires them to get out fast.
In most of the 91 shuttle missions that have flown in the past 17 years, the media have paid little attention to what NASA calls the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test. But the flock of photographers attracted to the rescue vehicle event served as an early sign of the growing public anticipation of the launch itself -- set for 2 p.m. Oct. 29.
"This won't be as big as the first moon launch, but this is going to be the biggest crowd since the first flight after the Challenger (which exploded in 1986)," said Rob Varley, executive director of the Florida Space Coast Office of Tourism in Brevard County.
About 300,000 people are expected to gather to watch the first American to orbit the Earth blast off again, this time at age 77. Most spectators will be locals driving in for the day. About 8,500 hotel rooms in Brevard County have been booked for months.
"They've filled up all the campgrounds, all the RV parks, all the hotels in a 40- to 50-mile radius," Mr. Varley said.
When the shuttle Discovery blasts off, it will be an eight-day, 22-hour flight, a far cry from the four-hour, 55-minute flight astronaut Glenn took in 1962 aboard Friendship 7.
The shuttle flight STS-95 has five major objectives: to launch a Spartan "free-flier' to study the sun; to run dozens of low-gravity health and science experiments in a Spacehab module carried in the cargo bay; to test components for a future repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope; to run a series of experiments called the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker; and to run a series of experiments on aging involving Mr. Glenn.
Space science
Mr. Glenn will serve as a payload specialist. He will be running several tests to compare the effects of space flight and the effects of aging. Mr. Glenn will be collecting his own blood and urine samples and connecting himself to monitors all designed to track bone and muscle loss, balance disorders and sleep disturbances.
If all goes well, the Discovery will land at 12:04 p.m. Nov. 7. More than 1 million people turned out in 1969 for Apollo 11, which made Neil Armstrong the first man to walk on the moon. Many people around the cape this week seem nearly as excited about the Glenn launch, Mr. Varley said.
"There are a few people who've called this the ultimate Congressional fact-finding mission, but most people are glad he's going up," Mr. Varley said.
"The older folks are seeing one of their heroes going back into space. The younger folks I've talked to say, "If a guy who's almost 80 can go, then maybe when space travel becomes more common, I'll be young enough to go.' "
SPECIAL GLENN REPORTS
![[glenn]](/editions/1998/10/08/glennshake_438x550.jpg)