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Glenn Adds ‘Glory And Prestige To Our Country’ | This Week In Space History

by michael shinabery

Twenty-two years before Clara Peller barked “Where’s the beef?” for Wendy’s hamburgers, Caroline Kennedy, age four, asked John Glenn, “ ‘Where’s the monkey?’ ”

Glenn related the story, to a joint session of the Congress, on Feb. 26, 1962 after spending time with President John Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, and Caroline, during John Glenn Day in Washington, D.C. Six days earlier, aboard his Mercury capsule Friendship VII, Glenn had become the first American to orbit Earth. A flight carrying the chimpanzee Enos had preceded him, which apparently got the First Daughter’s attention.

This 33-1/3rd rpm album, which Columbia Records released, contains audio from John Glenn’s entire mission, including his speech to a joint session of the Congress. – Image credit: Columbia Records Click to Enlarge

“I think Caroline really cut us down to size and put us back in our proper position,” Glenn joked. (Columbia Records released the audio of Glenn’s mission and congressional speech on the LP, “Roger, Friendship 7!”)

The Associated Press, in a Feb. 27 story the Daytona Beach Morning Journal headlined “Glenn’s Day of Glory,” summarized the event thusly: “A grinning, balding redhead, his proud family, unrelenting rain, fellow astronauts sharing the plaudits, soaked throngs cheering, waving and shouting, the nation’s leaders paying tribute to a hero who spoke humble confident words. Those were the basic ingredients of John H. Glenn Jr.’s big day in the nation’s capital.”

Of the heavy rains, The AP reported “bad weather, the bugaboo that dogged his initial efforts to get into orbit, followed Glenn yesterday. But there was no sign it dampened his spirits any.” The webpage aerospaceguide.net said weather delayed launches for nearly a month, beginning on Jan. 27.

Glenn’s congressional speech lasted 16 minutes, according to The AP. House Speaker John McCormack introduced Glenn as “a brave and courageous American,” and “a hero in World War II and in the Korean Conflict, who recently, in a most notable manner, added glory and prestige to our country.”

A joint session of the United States Congress greeted, and reacted, extremely favorably to Mercury astronaut John Glenn’s post-mission speech. – Image credit: NASA Click to Enlarge

After more than half a minute of applause and cheering (similar ovations followed), Glenn told those present: “I’m certainly glad to see that pride in our country and its accomplishments are not a thing of the past.” He then pointed out that only three years had passed “from the original vision of the Congress” for NASA, “to consummation of this orbital flight.”

Among the experiences Glenn described was zero-g. “Lack of gravity is a rather fascinating thing,” he said. “Objects in the cockpit can be parked in mid-air. … At one time during the flight I was using a small hand-held camera. Another system needed attention at that particular moment as I started to take a picture, so it seemed quite natural … to park the camera here in the air, go ahead and do what I wanted, and then take up the camera again and go on about the business.”

The Memphis, Tenn. Commercial Appeal, on Feb. 21, 1962, published this map of John Glenn’s three-orbit mission. – Image credit: Commercial Appeal Click to Enlarge

The April 1962 Sky and Telescope declared the mission the “first American manned satellite,” because Glenn orbited. Among the successes he touted was that “man can operate intelligently in space.” (Some scientists argued that, in vacuum, the brain would cease to function, causing death.) The magazine also stressed the importance of a pilot being in control, describing how “late in the first revolution the capsule began to yaw, and Glenn thereafter used the manual control stick to operate the superheated-steam jets for regulating the vehicle’s orientation.”

Glenn was optimistic regarding how NASA would benefit all mankind.

NASA released this photo on the evening before John Glenn launched to become the first American to orbit the Earth. – Image credit: NASA/AP Click to Enlarge

“I feel we’re on the brink of an area of expansion of knowledge about ourselves and our surroundings that is beyond description and comprehension,” Glenn said. “Our efforts today and what we’ve done so far are but small building blocks on a huge pyramid to come. Questions are sometimes raised regarding the immediate payoffs of our efforts. What benefits are we gaining from the money spent? Well, the real benefits we probably cannot even detail; they’re probably not even known to man today. But exploration, and the pursuit of knowledge, have always paid dividends in the long run, usually far greater than at the outset.”

Glenn’s optimism bore fruit. By 1986, according to that year’s Spinoff (an annual NASA publication), nearly 4,000 “NASA patented inventions (were) available for licensing” in such areas as food, medical, safety, and communication.

Glenn concluded his speech with: “As our knowledge of this universe in which we live increases, may God grant us the wisdom and knowledge to use it wisely.”

Afterward, McCormack praised the talk as “the greatest I ever have seen in Congress,” The AP reported.

Only one of the Mercury astronauts, the story said, was absent from the festivities. Gordon Cooper “was unable to make it back in time from Australia, where he manned one of the listening posts which kept tabs on Glenn’s flight.” In his 2000 autobiography “Leap of Faith,” Cooper praised Glenn as “a wonderful spokesman not only for NASA but for America”; and described him as “a freckle-faced Tom Sawyer type with a sunny smile who … was awfully good at charming his way in or out of about any situation.”

Glenn was “the fifth man to have traveled in a space capsule,” Sky and Telescope documented. The first four were Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov, and astronauts Alan Shepard and Virgil “Gus” Grissom.

Michael Shinabery is an education specialist and Humanities Scholar with the New Mexico Museum of Space History. E-mail him at michael.shinabery@state.nm.us.

Tags: Alan Shepard, Friendship 7, Friendship VII, Gherman Titov, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, John Kennedy, manned spaceflight, Mercury capsule, Mercury program, Mercury spacecraft, NASA, space history, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Yuri Gagarin