Word: astronautical
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...Glenn went aloft on Feb. 20, 1962, the U.S. was taking its first toddling steps on its long march to the moon. Although he was 40, Glenn figured he still had a lot of flying ahead of him. When he returned to Earth, he found otherwise. Like any other astronaut, he periodically approached Bob Gilruth, head of the Mercury program, to inquire about his position in the flight rotation; unlike any other astronaut, he was routinely stonewalled. "Headquarters doesn't want you to go back up," Gilruth would say to him, "at least...
...first, Glenn accepted this with a shrug, but as time went by and more and more of his astronaut brothers were chosen for the Gemini and Apollo programs that followed Mercury, he grew increasingly frustrated. Finally, in 1964, he resigned from NASA. "It was only years later that I read in a book that Kennedy had passed the word that he didn't want me to go back up," Glenn says. "I don't know if he was afraid of the political fallout if I got killed, but by the time I found out, he had been dead for some...
...Glenn, a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, was paging through a textbook on space physiology when a thought struck him. Doctors had long since identified more than 50 changes that take place in an astronaut's body during weightlessness, including blood changes, cardiovascular changes, changes in balance control, weakening of the bones, loss of coordination and disruption of sleep cycles. As a lay expert on aging, Glenn recognized that these are precisely the things that happen to people on Earth as they grow older. "I figured we could learn a lot if we sent an older person...
...course, not the way to go. If 20 years in Washington had taught Glenn anything, it was that bureaucratic balance wheels have to be turned gently. He decided to start by contacting a few NASA physicians and asking them, almost casually, if they had ever looked into the astronaut-geriatric parallel. Why, yes, they had, the doctors said. As a matter of fact, they had published a little pamphlet on the topic. Would Glenn like a copy...
...formally pitched his case for returning to space. "I told him there are 34 million Americans over 65, and that's due to triple in the next 50 years," Glenn recalls. "And I told him someone ought to look into this." Goldin, savvy about the wiles of flight-hungry astronauts--even flight-hungry astronauts who haven't flown in 34 years--saw medical merit in the argument and offered Glenn a deal. If the science held up to peer review, he promised, and if Glenn could get past the same physical every other astronaut must pass, NASA would seriously consider...