- Godwin, Robert ed.
Friendship 7: The NASA Mission Reports.
Burlington, Ontario, Canada: Apogee Books, 1999.
ISBN 1-896522-60-2.
-
This installment in the Apogee NASA
Mission Reports series contains original pre- and
post-flight documents describing the first United States manned
orbital flight piloted by
John Glenn
on February 20th, 1962, including a complete transcript of the
air-to-ground communications from launch through splashdown. An
excerpt from the Glenn's postflight debriefing describing his
observations from space including the “fireflies” seen at orbital
sunrise is included, along with a scientific evaluation which, in
retrospect, seems to have gotten everything just about right. Glenn's
own 13 page report on the flight is among the documents, as is backup
pilot Scott Carpenter's report on training for the mission in which he
describes the “extinctospectropolariscope-occulogyrogravoadaptometer”,
abbreviated “V-Meter” in order to fit into the spacecraft
(p. 110). A companion CD-ROM includes a one hour NASA film about
the mission, with flight day footage from the tracking stations around
the globe, and film from the pilot observation camera synchronised
with recorded radio communications. An unintentionally funny
introduction by the editor (complete with two idiot “it's”-es on
consecutive lines) attempts to defend Glenn's 1998 political junket /
P.R. stunt aboard socialist space ship Discovery. “If NASA
is going to conduct gerontology experiments in orbit, who is more
eminently qualified….” Well, a false
predicate does imply anything, but if NASA were at all
genuinely interested in geezers in space independent of political
payback, why didn't they also fly
John Young,
only nine years Glenn's junior, who walked on the Moon, commanded the
first flight of the space shuttle, was Chief of the Astronaut Office
for ten years, and a NASA astronaut continuously from 1962 until his
retirement in 2004, yet never given a flight assignment since 1983?
Glenn's competence and courage needs no embellishment—and the
contrast between the NASA in the days of his first flight and that of
his second could not be more stark.
December 2005 