Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
John Glenn’s Flight
In elementary school, they brought TVs into our classrooms so we could watch the Mercury missions. John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth (after many delays and cancellations).
I found this copy of one of my father’s souvenirs yesterday. I think this track comes from my father’s Naval Space Surveillance System. Two years later, it would help inspire him to start his navsat program Timation which led to GPS.
Published in Science & Technology
Cool!
When I was a kid in middle school they also brought in a TV to class to watch John Glenn’s second trip to space.
When I was in high school, John Glenn High School was in our conference. It was was in New Concord, Ohio, which I presume is his home town. They were the Muskies, named after (I presume) Big Muskie – the largest piece of earth moving equipment in the world – a pan used in the strip mines in that area. Our marching band posed in it’s bucket. It was big.
I don’t remember much about the actual school, except that they weren’t very good at football, which was all that really mattered to me then.
Richard,
You just wanted me to put up this video.
They had the big TV set up in the auditorium. We all went down and watched the launch.
Regards,
Jim
One of my Dad’s colleagues, Navy Capt David Holmes, knew Glenn when they were both stationed at the Pentagon. Holmes arranged for my father to get a powerful transmitter at Lake Kickapoo, TX for the Naval Space Surveillance System. In 1973, he started working for my father at NRL on Space Surveillance and what became GPS. He played a pivotal role in a meeting Brad Parkinson, who some people claim is the father of GPS, has never acknowledged over Labor Day weekend 1973. Dad also had a similarly signed document from Glenn’s Space Shuttle mission.
My mom let me be “sick” on the day John Glenn blasted into orbit. It makes me smile when I remember that. She also helped me fund the purchase of the GI Joe Mercury capsule.
My mom referred to this scenario as “Gemini flu.” Whenever something was supposed to go up, I was glued to the TV, school or no school.
I was born the day before John Glenn flew. I would have been named John Glenn, except my older brother’s middle name was already Glenn.
I never got to meet him, although I did pick up a copy of the Time Magazine (with him on the cover) from that week many years ago, and then once when I was visiting Washington I stopped by his office to see if I could get it signed. He was out of town, but I left it and received it in the mail a few weeks later. The aide I left it with insisted that he signed all those types of things personally, he didn’t use autopen for them.