BY MARCIA DUNN
AP Aerospace Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Lyn Glenn's first words, when her father told her he was angling to become the oldest man in space, were: "What? You're kidding!"
"I am against it," she informed John Glenn. "I absolutely would not want you to do that."
Almost three years have passed since that out-of-the-blue breakfast conversation, and Ms. Glenn remains opposed to her father's launch next Thursday aboard space shuttle Discovery. Nevertheless, she's at his side as the 77-year-old astronaut and retiring senator heads into the final week of training for his second and, his family hopes, final spaceflight.
"Would I have him do this? N-o-o-o-o," Ms. Glenn, 51, said by telephone this week from Houston, where she and her mother are doting on their favorite astronaut before his nine-day geriatric-research mission. "Am I being supportive? You bet."
It's not just the dangers of spaceflight that bother her. It's the months he has devoted to training and all the goodwill trips planned after he gets back.
"I guess we had some sort of image, our own image, of what it would be like when he retired from the Senate, and it had not included the Discovery launch," she said, laughing.
John Glenn admits his family was cool to the idea of his returning to space, but claims they warmed up when they heard about the medical experiments he would be conducting.
Ms. Glenn, a counselor and refugee worker-turned-painter who lives in St. Paul, Minn., said her brother shares her misgivings. Dr. David Glenn, 52, is a family practitioner in Northern California; his two sons are about the same age he and his sister were when their father rocketed away on Feb. 20, 1962.
"Both of us had the same response when we heard about this," Ms. Glenn said. "It was kind of like, "Been there, don't want to do that again.' Our whole lives, we both have lived with the potential of our father's death."
First came Korea, after his stint as a combat pilot in World War II. Then came test pilot work. Then came Project Mercury. And then, perhaps most frightening for the Glenn teen-agers, came America's first manned orbital flight.
Lyn (short for Carolyn) vividly recalls watching the launch with her mother, brother and maternal grandparents at the family's home in Arlington, Va. A local TV dealer donated three sets so the Glenns could tune in to each network.
This time, the Glenns -- grandsons included -- will gather with the six other astronauts' families next week atop the launch control center, just four miles from the pad. President Clinton may join them.
Ms. Glenn expects the launch will be "heart-stopping, one of those times where milliseconds become like years," just as it was 36 years ago.
Back then, John and Annie Glenn decided she would remain at home with the children on launch day.
"They felt if he was killed, if that occurred, it would be harder for Dave and me to experience that" away from home, Ms. Glenn explained quietly.
Death was openly discussed among the family.
On a hiking trip just before his flight, Ms. Glenn remembers her father telling her and her brother "that if he died, he didn't want us to blame NASA or the government or God. He wanted us to know that this was just the way it had to be, and if he died he had died doing the job that he wanted to do."
Have they had that conversation again?
"We're not at that point yet," she said. "He's still in training and we haven't had that kind of discussion and I frankly doubt we'll have that same kind of discussion because we're adults now."
"I believe that he will live and that his life will be extended by this experience," she added. "But I also know if he does die, that he will die one of the happiest people who ever lived."
