BY MARCIA DUNN
AP Aerospace Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- As usual, John Glenn was thinking ahead. In 1962, about to become the first American to orbit the Earth, the Ohioan wondered what would happen if he had to make an emergency landing in the outback or jungle. What would he say? More importantly, how would he say it?
"Here comes this big chute down," Glenn says, imagining how it might have looked to the inhabitants, "a little black thing on the end of it hits and the side of it blows off, and out steps this guy in a silver suit.
"You've got two things. You're going to be chief or god, or dead pretty quick. One or the other."
Not particularly interested in either option, Glenn had language experts at the Library of Congress translate a "take me to your leader" message into about six languages. The message stressed he came in peace and promised a big reward "if you get me back to where I came from."
Glenn folded up the piece of paper containing the phonetic translations and tucked it in a pocket. Fortunately, he never had to use it -- his Friendship 7 capsule stayed safely aloft as it soared over the Australian outback and unexplored areas of New Guinea and Africa, plopping down into the Atlantic as planned on Feb. 20, 1962.
Glenn -- Senator Glenn by then -- was thinking ahead, again, when he noticed at the end of 1995 that many of the ailments plaguing astronauts in weightlessness were also the scourge of the elderly on Earth: flabby muscles, frail bones, depressed immune system, fitful sleep.
He listed the comparisons on a legal pad and, months later, approached NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin about flying a senior to test the theory and push the envelope. "If I can pass a physical, why not me?" Glenn asked -- more than once. In January, Goldin finally capitulated.
Lyn Glenn calls her father's maneuvering "vintage Dad." "For him to have the gumption and the energy to go to Dan Goldin and say, "Hey, look what I just figured out,' I mean, it's just typical of him," she says. "He is dogged and he is persistent."
He evidently was born that way.
The ambitious son of a New Concord, Ohio, plumber and schoolteacher (he keeps his father's wrench on his Senate desk), Glenn was aiming for a medical career in the 1940s when World War II intervened. He dropped out of college and joined the Naval Aviation Cadet program and then the Marines. That same year -- 1943 -- he married his childhood sweetheart, Annie. They had two children: David, now 52 and a doctor, and Lyn, 51, a counselor and refugee worker-turned-artist.
Glenn flew 149 combat missions during World War II and the Korean War, then went on to test pilot school. He was hooked on flying and gave up his doctoring dreams.
In July 1957, Glenn set a transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to New York, traveling at supersonic speed in three hours and 23 minutes. Three months later, Sputnik soared. And one year after that, the newly formed NASA began searching for military test pilots willing to double as astronauts.
Glenn was considered a little too old -- he was 37 when NASA chose him and 40 when he rocketed away. And he lacked a college degree -- New Concord's Muskingum College awarded him a bachelor's degree in engineering in 1962.
No matter -- NASA liked what it saw.
Glenn had a large envelope tucked under one arm when he showed up for his interview for one of the coveted Mercury astronaut spots. Inside were the results of centrifuge runs he'd done to see how much force the human body could withstand.
"Furthermore," recalls Charles Donlan, who headed the astronaut-selection panel, "he was the only one of 85 people who said, "Can I come back in the evening and study the drawings on the Project Mercury capsule?' " That clinched it for Donlan.
The freckled, fresh-faced Marine went on to become not only an original Mercury astronaut, but the first of the bunch to orbit the Earth.
Afterward, Glenn stuck around NASA nagging his bosses for a second flight. He got tired of waiting and quit in 1964. Years later, Glenn learned from a book that President Kennedy had instructed NASA not to risk the astronaut's life by assigning him to another space flight.
He dabbled in business until being elected to the Senate in 1974, as a Democrat from Ohio, on his third try. The first try ended when he slipped in the bathroom and hit his head on the tub, the second in a decisive primary loss to Howard Metzenbaum.
Glenn made an unsuccessful run for the presidency in 1984 that left him heavily in debt. Last year, he announced he would retire from politics at the beginning of 1999.
Then came Discovery.
"Somebody made a reference to what a wonderful way for him to close his career and I laughed," Lyn Glenn says. "I said, "What do you mean? I mean, I don't know what he's going to do next, but this isn't the end.' "
Won't he be bored when all the excitement ends. "Nope," says Glenn.
He plans to lecture at Ohio State University, where he's donating all his papers, and Muskingum College; he hopes to inspire young people to go into politics.
"Most of my life has been dedicated to this country, and I'm not going to lose interest in what's going to be the future of this country just because I'm not going to be in the Senate anymore."
Or in space.
