Word: glenns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Eerie World. After liftoff, the next crucial stage of the flight was the separation of the rocket and capsule at the proper angle to put Glenn into the programmed orbit. When his orbit was confirmed at the Cape, Glenn jubilantly radioed back: "Capsule is turning around. Oh, that view is tremendous! I can see the booster doing turnarounds just a couple of hundred yards behind. Cape...
...left the Atlantic behind and began to cross Africa, Glenn set out to test his reactions to the eerie world of weightlessness. He gobbled some malt tablets and carefully squeezed a tube of applesauce into his mouth. He felt fine. Swallowing was no problem. "It's all positive action. Your tongue forces it back in the throat and you swallow normally. It's all a positive displacement machine all the way through." He shook his head violently to see if the motion would induce space sickness. Nothing happened. "I have had no ill effects at all from zero...
Floating Camera. Indeed, weightlessness became a sort of sport. Glenn had with him a small hand camera to take pictures with through his window. "It just seemed perfectly natural, rather than put the camera away, I just put it out in mid-air and let go of it." With the camera suspended as though on an invisible shelf, Glenn went on with other work, then reached back and plucked the camera out of the air. Only once was there any difficulty. Preparing to change film, Glenn let the roll slip out of his fingers. He grabbed for it, but "instead...
Soaring over the Indian Ocean, Glenn experienced his first nightfall in space. It was spectacular. "As the sun goes down, it's very white, brilliant light, and as it goes below the horizon you get a very bright orange color. Down close to the surface it pales out into sort of a blue, a darker blue, and then off into black." The stars were bright diamonds on black velvet. "If you've been out in the desert on a very clear, brilliant night when there's no moon and the stars just seem to jump out at you, that...
...approached Australia. Glenn radioed Astronaut Gordon Cooper in the tracking station at Muchea: "That was about the shortest day I've ever run into. Just to my right, I can see a big pattern of light, apparently right on the coast." The glow was the city of Perth, which had prepared? a welcome for Glenn that was also a test of his night vision. Street lights were ablaze. Families turned on their porch lights, spread sheets out in the yard as reflectors. Taxi drivers flicked their lights on and off. When the lights were explained to him, Glenn radioed Cooper...