 "Photo: David Heasley")
To John Glenn, the mission aboard Friendship 7 seems like it was a week ago. Though it would have had to be one long week to allow the national icon to go from a daring, young pilot to an 85-year-old retired Senator.
The flight actually took place 45 years ago on Feb. 20, 1962 and put John Glenn in the history books as the first American to orbit the Earth.
Glenn spent four hours and 55 minutes in space and orbited the Earth three times.
On Tuesday Glenn talked about the history-making moment in a lecture entitled "Friendship 2007: A Conversation with John Glenn."
The event, which was attended by Gov. Ted Strickland, his wife Frances and Glenn's wife Annie, took place at COSI in the aptly named John Glenn Extreme Screen Theater.
Glenn said that there were many concerns and unknowns about what would happen aboard the Friendship 7.
"Some ophthalmologists thought that in zero-G's your eyes may change shape in orbit and then you would slowly go blind," he said.
To monitor this, Glenn had to read an eye chart every 20 minutes during a near five hour voyage. There were also concerns about other basic human activities.
"We had food on the first flight just to see if we could swallow in space... I had a tube of applesauce," Glenn said.
He had no trouble swallowing. The only health problem Glenn did encounter during the mission was while opening the safety hatch after returning to Earth. A pin on the mechanism used to open the door pierced his spacesuit and cut his hand, but that was one of the least pressing concerns Glenn had about the landing.
"I became concerned about what would happen if I had to make an emergency landing in an unprepared part of the world," Glenn said.
He worried about what would happen if an isolated group of people, who had never been exposed to outsiders, saw a giant capsule plummet from the sky and then a man in a silver jumpsuit step out.
"I figured I would either be (considered) God or dead very soon," he said.
To prepare for this situation Glenn had messages of peace translated into various languages and took them with him aboard Friendship 7.
"In all the languages we translated into, the word for stranger and the word for enemy was the same," Glenn said. "I think that's an important lesson for life, the better we know someone and understand them the less likely we are to call them an enemy."
This message of understanding was also a theme when Glenn was given the task of naming the spacecraft.
"I turned the job of naming the spacecraft over to my son and daughter," he said. "They suggested the way we should be remembered for this flight is friendship. And seven, of course, represents the seven astronauts that worked on the flight."
A special exhibit entitled "An American Triumph in the Race for Space: The Friendship 7 Spaceflight of John Glenn" will be presented by the John Glenn School of Public Affairs for the next 45 days on the ground floor of Page Hall. It will include material from the John Glenn archives related to the Friendship 7 flight.
Jeff Thomas a John Glenn archivist for the OSU libraries, said the exhibit will have material about the famous flight, putting it in the perspective of the space race and the Cold War.
"It will feature some materials about the country and world's reactions to the flight and the aftermath afterward," Thomas said. "There will also be some artifacts and memorabilia from the space flight itself."
Gov. Strickland said he can still remember sitting in class at Asbury College listening intently to the radio as Glenn made his flight.
"I never thought I would have the opportunity to meet (him)," Strickland said.
"A country produces a select few individuals who are of historic proportions... 100 years from now young people throughout Ohio, the United States and the world will know the name of John Glenn," he said.
Glenn took the praise modestly and said he hopes that people will view his historic flight as an achievement for all Americans, however, he does realize what a special opportunity he had.
"I'd never seen things like that," he said. "We've never had anyone from our country experience that before and I was probably the first person to experience it because the Soviet's spacecraft didn't have windows. It was an opportunity to do things people had never done before."
Kelly Gilmartin can be reached at gilmartin.7@osu.edu.
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