It has been 25 years since pioneering American astronaut John Glenn returned to orbit aboard Space Shuttle Discovery at the age of 77. I was there when the septuagenarian spaceman left the Earth and re-entered the history books on Oct. 29, 1998.
Glenn had become an American icon in 1962 as the first American to orbit the globe in a tiny, one-ton Mercury spacecraft. I watched that adventure on black and white TV in 1962, and decades later saw with my own eyes Glenn’s return to the cosmos 36 years after he first flew into orbit during the Cold War space race with the Russians.
I had attended other space shuttle launches, including the very first flight on Apr. 12, 1981—20 years to the day after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in 1961. I was there near the Cape Canaveral launch site for the first night launch of a shuttle in 1983. I was in the Space Coast crowd in 1988 viewing the first successful space shuttle flight after the Challenger explosion that had killed seven astronauts in 1986, but John Glenn’s sentimental journey back to the future was a positive and historic event that will always be remembered by those who cheered when the old space cowboy Glenn rode again.
It was a perfect day for flying 25 years ago. The blue Florida sky was cloudless and temperatures were mild. Gazing through powerful binoculars, I could see Space Shuttle Discovery poised at its seaside Cape Canaveral rocket rookery. Massive crowds packed the beaches near the Cape and thronged viewing areas in nearby towns like Titusville and Cocoa Beach. Half a million eyes were focused on the faraway spaceship as Glenn and his crewmates waited to leave Earth. In 1962, Glenn’s first space flight had been plagued by maddening postponements over a span of nearly two months. That was not the case in 1998, when a clean countdown was only briefly interrupted by private planes in the launch area that were quickly shooed away by no-nonsense military jet fighters.
As the countdown resumed, the crowd was on its feet. Across the broad expanse of the Indian River, Space Shuttle Discovery was coming to life. Then the drama came to its denouement as with one voice the teeming multitude counted down the last seconds and the shuttle began to stir. In a heart-stopping micro-moment, orange flames surged onto a launch pad the size of a baseball diamond. Great clouds of smoke and steam billowed and surged in the Florida air. The fire-spitting spaceship leaped into the azure sky as thousands cheered. After two minutes, at an altitude of nearly 30 miles, the shuttle doffed its booster rockets and headed into orbit. Down below on Planet Earth, the thousands who viewed the launch broke into applause, cheers and tears of joy. John Glenn was back in space.
In 1962, when Glenn made his first space flight, he rode atop an Atlas rocket that The Right Stuff author Tom Wolfe described as “a squat, ugly brute.” Though the Atlas was one of America’s most powerful rockets at the time, space shuttles like the one that Glenn rode in 1998 were 20 times as powerful as the Atlas of 1962. In his 1999 autobiography, Glenn noted that the speed, noise and vibration during his shuttle launch were “much more pronounced” than the sensations of his Atlas flight.
In 1984 I met John Glenn at the Athens airport while he was making an unsuccessful run for the presidency. As he graciously signed a book for me in perfect cursive handwriting, I told him that his 1962 flight really gave me a thrill when I saw it on TV. He winked his eye, gave his famous “aw shucks” grin and said, “It kinda gave me a thrill, too.”
Glenn died at age 95 in 2016, but he gained a place in the hearts of Americans during his long and eventful life. He spoke words that are more true than ever in our cynical and divided times: “The happiest and most fulfilled people are those who devote themselves to something bigger and more profound than just their own self-interest.”
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
