Word: glenn
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...anyone contemplating Glenn's return to space, this kind of existential ciphering is irresistible. The country is now further in time from Glenn's first trip into orbit, for example, than Glenn's first trip into orbit was from Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic. A man who was Glenn's current age when Glenn was born would himself have been 17 years old when the Civil War began. Then too, there are the people who saw Glenn's first flight who either will or won't be here for the second. Khrushchev, Kennedy, Johnson, Mao Zedong--all towering figures...
That kind of perspective shifting, that kind of standing back from the pointillist portrait of history, may be what Glenn's return to space is really all about. Glenn and NASA will never wholly concede this spiritual point, but Glenn and NASA don't have to concede it. John Glenn flew in 1962, and an exuberant country decided it just might live forever. Thirty-six years later, an older, more sober nation could use a little of that feeling again...
This is no country for old men, so John Glenn will be leaving it in October--will quit the entire planet and head out for a realm where age doesn't count. Oddly, it was the realization that young people go through the process of aging in space--cardiovascular shifts, immune-system changes, loss of muscle and of bone density--that gave Glenn his long-sought means of getting back to the extra-world that made him. What was a usable scientific rationale for him became a new way to understand space for others. If the young temporarily grow...
...Whatever Glenn or any of his boosters say is the purpose of this mission, you and I know it is about romance and adventure and danger and the beauty of a person on a quest. The story-hungry mind is ageless too. And here is the old/new story of courage in a distant place, of daring and going. Never mind that the carpers call this mission useless. The public does not require a usefulness beyond its own admiring pleasure. As for the practicalities of the space program, it was never so useful as when it reminded the country of heroic...
...attraction isn't only that it's a person out there; it's the aloneness. The person is always alone; no matter if he really is alone or not. He is Columbus, Lindbergh and Glenn in his original three-orbit flight. After the Friendship 7 flight in 1962, Glenn said it for everyone: "Now we can get rid of some of that automatic equipment and let man take over...