Word: glenn
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...John Glenn was an astronaut in the Mercury space program with...
This is no knock on NASA either. Sure, it shamelessly hyped the Glenn flight. But NASA, a living rebuke to those conservatives who believe that government can do nothing right, is perfectly entitled to use whatever stunt it can to gin up the nation's constantly flagging interest in the greatest human achievement of this half-century, space flight...
...what a job it did with Glenn. When was the last time the country stopped, riveted to the TV, anxiously awaiting a launch? When was the last time television sets were wheeled into classrooms? When was the last time kids cheered our national space truck making yet another haul? Most people were surprised to learn that the Glenn flight is the shuttle's 92nd. Except, sadly, for Challenger, who can remember any of the other...
...honest about the Glenn trip. The attempt to sell it as science, though entirely understandable, is entirely laughable. This enormous expense--and considerable risk--to pick up a datum or two about geriatrics? How our horizons have shrunk. Space flight was once about destiny, not telemetry. Three decades ago, Kennedy spoke for the nation when he ringingly declared, "We choose to go to the moon." What have we to say now? "We choose to study Metamucil digestion in microgravity...
...suppose I should take comfort in the spectacle of John Glenn rocketing off into outer space, which as a media event is being sold to us as the harbinger of a grand new age of elderly achievement and vitality. Still, for all of Glenn's outsize bravery--and narcissism--I suspect that as a subject of public fascination his flight is really just a more patriotic, sober and expensive variation of The Wedding Singer's rapping granny. It's one of the most unshakable rules of comedy: old people acting hip always get a laugh. And, yes, there is comfort...