scarf patterned with red hearts. And he did manage to shoot down three of the buggers from his plane with LYN ANNIE DAVE painted on the fuselage. In Korea, Johnny and his plane had survived over 250 enemy “flak holes.” His F9F Panther jet interceptor looked like it was made of Swiss cheese. The Glenns’ wood-paneled walls were so cluttered with pictures and certificates celebrating John’s fighter pilot career, he called it a danged museum.
Squeezed into a flying tin can the size of a bathtub, John was to spin around the globe three times at 17,544 mph and return home in a brilliant ball of fire screaming through the atmosphere. The slightest wrong tilt of his spacecraft would fry him in an instant.
Annie waited the excruciating five hours while John orbited the Earth three times and saw four beautiful sunsets and sunrises. And he did indeed see in them the handiwork of God. Space sunsets came and went in a flash. He radioed excitedly, “The sunset was beautiful. I still have a brilliant blue band clear across the horizon. The sky is absolutely black, completely black. I can see the stars up above.” He tried to pick out familiar constellations he’d known since he was a boy.
He experienced weightlessness, which Alan and Gus had only tasted a few moments of, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to him: “I think I have finally found the element in which I belong.” He radioed to the ground when he spotted some fascinating glowing “fireflies,” which conjured up theories of minuscule extraterrestrial life at Mission Control.
But there was a problem, one so threatening that ground control kept the full extent of it from the astronaut. The metal shield protecting his capsule from burning up in the atmosphere upon reentry was registering a warning signal. If the heat shield failed to deploy, John would be incinerated.
At one point during his reentry before landing, there was nothing but silence from his capsule; all signals to the Earth were lost.
Finally, a giant fireball dropped through the sky, rainbow contrails streaming behind it. John’s peppermint-striped parachute was the most wonderful sight he, and Annie, had ever seen. His capsule was hoisted safely aboard the aircraft carrier Randolph before he got out, to make dang sure it didn’t sink like Gus’s. As soon as he had the opportunity, he switched his handheld air-conditioning device from his left hand to his right. He’d worked out this signal with Annie, in the expectation that the television cameras would record it. The space-age briefcase changing hands was his way to tell her, “I love you.”
A few days later in New York City, Annie sat high on the back of a convertible riding along downtown Manhattan’s Canyon of Heroes next to her husband, America’s new hero. It was the biggest ticker-tape parade since Charles Lindbergh’s. This was Annie’s sort of publicity. She didn’t have to say a word. In a Jackie-inspired crimson suit and matching pillbox hat, she waved to the crowds and smiled away. In all the cities they traveled to—New York, Chicago, and Washington—they were welcomed with a blizzard of ticker tape and confetti. The other astronauts and their wives were waving from their own cars, all part of the parades because John had insisted, “They don’t go, I don’t go.”
Squaresville
L ike Betty Crocker and Mickey Mouse, John Glenn was now a household name. NASA was astounded at how great a hero he had become. His Friendship 7 mission was America’s greatest victory in the space race so far, packing more of a punch than Alan Shepard’s first spaceflight. Deke Slayton was scheduled to orbit the Earth next, but suddenly, perhaps realizing just how valuable their astronauts were, NASA decided it couldn’t take the chance. The space agency had chosen Deke to be an astronaut despite his heart murmur, but the possibility of it acting up, no matter how small, was a risk that NASA no longer wanted to
Squeezed into a flying tin can the size of a bathtub, John was to spin around the globe three times at 17,544 mph and return home in a brilliant ball of fire screaming through the atmosphere. The slightest wrong tilt of his spacecraft would fry him in an instant.
Annie waited the excruciating five hours while John orbited the Earth three times and saw four beautiful sunsets and sunrises. And he did indeed see in them the handiwork of God. Space sunsets came and went in a flash. He radioed excitedly, “The sunset was beautiful. I still have a brilliant blue band clear across the horizon. The sky is absolutely black, completely black. I can see the stars up above.” He tried to pick out familiar constellations he’d known since he was a boy.
He experienced weightlessness, which Alan and Gus had only tasted a few moments of, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to him: “I think I have finally found the element in which I belong.” He radioed to the ground when he spotted some fascinating glowing “fireflies,” which conjured up theories of minuscule extraterrestrial life at Mission Control.
But there was a problem, one so threatening that ground control kept the full extent of it from the astronaut. The metal shield protecting his capsule from burning up in the atmosphere upon reentry was registering a warning signal. If the heat shield failed to deploy, John would be incinerated.
At one point during his reentry before landing, there was nothing but silence from his capsule; all signals to the Earth were lost.
Finally, a giant fireball dropped through the sky, rainbow contrails streaming behind it. John’s peppermint-striped parachute was the most wonderful sight he, and Annie, had ever seen. His capsule was hoisted safely aboard the aircraft carrier Randolph before he got out, to make dang sure it didn’t sink like Gus’s. As soon as he had the opportunity, he switched his handheld air-conditioning device from his left hand to his right. He’d worked out this signal with Annie, in the expectation that the television cameras would record it. The space-age briefcase changing hands was his way to tell her, “I love you.”
A few days later in New York City, Annie sat high on the back of a convertible riding along downtown Manhattan’s Canyon of Heroes next to her husband, America’s new hero. It was the biggest ticker-tape parade since Charles Lindbergh’s. This was Annie’s sort of publicity. She didn’t have to say a word. In a Jackie-inspired crimson suit and matching pillbox hat, she waved to the crowds and smiled away. In all the cities they traveled to—New York, Chicago, and Washington—they were welcomed with a blizzard of ticker tape and confetti. The other astronauts and their wives were waving from their own cars, all part of the parades because John had insisted, “They don’t go, I don’t go.”
Squaresville
L ike Betty Crocker and Mickey Mouse, John Glenn was now a household name. NASA was astounded at how great a hero he had become. His Friendship 7 mission was America’s greatest victory in the space race so far, packing more of a punch than Alan Shepard’s first spaceflight. Deke Slayton was scheduled to orbit the Earth next, but suddenly, perhaps realizing just how valuable their astronauts were, NASA decided it couldn’t take the chance. The space agency had chosen Deke to be an astronaut despite his heart murmur, but the possibility of it acting up, no matter how small, was a risk that NASA no longer wanted to
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