Celebrating 50 years in orbit

The Mercury 7 astronauts were enormous American heroes, and
John Glenn was the biggest name of them all. Glenn became
 the first American to orbit the Earth 50 years ago, on
Feb. 20, 1962. Photo: NASA.

For a nation that sometimes seems obsessed with meaningless milestones, there sure wasn’t much hullabaloo today to mark the 50th anniversary of the first American orbital space flight. On this date in 1962 John Glenn orbited the Earth three times, and it was the first small step of the giant leap to the Moon by the end of the decade.

Roger Launius, curator of the space section of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian and a former NASA chief historian, spoke Sunday at the Museum of Flight in Seattle about the historical significance of that first orbital mission.

“John Glenn, the most popular of the Mercury 7 astronauts, the one who was the most glib, the most forthcoming, the most extroverted, the one who spoke so incredibly well about everything, was the man who carried the standard for Americans into Earth orbit,” Launius said. “It seems quite fitting that he did so.”

Launuis spoke with true affection for Glenn, whom he knows well and describes as one of the nicest men he has ever met. One of the more interesting stories Launius told during the talk was about how Glenn practically smuggled a drugstore camera onto his Friendship 7 flight.

“Nobody at NASA at the time seemed to realize that people would want pictures of Earth from space,” Launius marveled about the agency that now puts out terabytes worth of photos. “Hard to believe. But they were engineers and they were mostly concerned with the technical stuff.”

GI Joe was NOT the first man in space, but many of us who grew
up in the 1960s had the GI Joe Mercury capsule, and splashed
 it down in whatever bodies of water we could create in our
backyards. This one is on display at Seattle's Museum of Flight.
Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“[Glenn] took those pictures, they were developed and released to the public, and everybody went crazy, and everybody at NASA said, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’” Launius said. “It set a standard for what would become normal activity of all human spaceflight missions up to the present.”

The Mercury 7 astronauts achieved hero status even before they accomplished much of anything, which Launius said baffled most of them. But he said the recognition was deserved as the astronauts were the point people for an enormous effort.

“It’s important to remember that while these guys get the fame and the accolades—and clearly they deserve that; they’re the ones risking their lives in a very difficult setting—they have thousands of people behind them making it possible for them to do that,” Launius said.

Glenn had the right stuff to achieve greater fame than any of the others. Launius said that Glenn quit the space program out of concern he would never get to fly again; NASA probably would not want to risk losing the most visible icon of the space age. When Glenn finally did fly again he created quite a stir. It was 1998 when he flew on a mission of the space shuttle Discovery and became, at 77, the oldest person to travel in space. Launius noted that by then the shuttle missions had become mundane in the public eye.

Astronauts rode in Mercury capsules less than 10 feet long and
barely six feet in diameter at the base. The thing hurtled through
 space at speeds greater than 17,000 MPH. This mockup is
at the Museum of Flight. Photo: Greg Scheiderer.

“John Glenn is approved to fly into space a second time, and it again is like 1962,” Launius said. “Everybody is excited, all the media show up, and the public is energized in ways I had never seen previously. It was a stunning accomplishment, and it says a lot about the character and the mindset of the public in relationship to this hero that goes back now 50 years.”

Launius is amazed at what we accomplished in such a short time after the Mercury 7 astronauts were introduced in 1959.

“Within a decade we were standing on the Moon and putting the American flag on it, and demonstrating to the world that we are second to none when it comes to science and technology,” he said. “That’s fundamentally what Apollo was about.”

Now, Launius says, we’re poised to take the next giant leap.

“Earth orbit is no longer a frontier. When John Glenn flew in 1962 it was very much a frontier,” he said. “This is now a normal realm of human activity.”

“In 50 years we’ve gone a long way,” he added. “One would like to think in the next 50 years we will go much beyond this.”

Let's get Pluto and New Horizons on a postage stamp

Postage doubled between the time of Project Mercury
and the Moon landing. And airmail was all the way up
to a dime. Stamps from the Greg Scheiderer collection.

I find it fascinating how often my interest in space and astronomy sends me off on a mental trip to another place and time. Beyond the notion that my eyeball often captures photons that left their point of origin before the dawn of human civilization, I sometimes find that the hobby moves me around even within my own lifetime.

It happened again today. I learned during my morning reading about the newly launched effort to get the U.S. Postal Service to issue a commemorative stamp depicting the New Horizons mission to Pluto. This leads me to a confession: I’m a former philatelist.

This is a deep, dark secret that not even my wife knew about. I hadn’t had the stamp album out of the box in probably 40 years. Yet the thing kept following me through nine moves, and probably even more efforts to jettison junk. Somehow, this morning, I found the box, opened it up, and went in search of some of those space stamps I remember so well. As the collected works spread out to take up most of the dining room table, my wife walked in and, with a puzzled look, asked “What’s all that stuff.” Well, its the stamp collection, of course. (It had been in that box she kept asking me to move to another spot after the latest move, back into the house after last year’s remodeling project.)

Many nations issued stamps commemorating space heroes. Here
is a stamp from Mongolia depicting Yuri Gagarin, a Qatar stamp
 of Neil Armstrong, one from Romania with Wally Schirra, and
a Hungarian stamp of John Glenn. From the Greg Scheiderer collection.

Among the valued items in my stamp box are my stamp collecting merit badge pamphlet and my handwritten notes, on 3×5 cards, for the presentation I made to earn the badge. In the notes I listed three reasons for stamp collecting: money, fun, and learning about other countries. At least one of those is true; stamp collecting is the only reason I know where Qatar is. The Middle-Eastern country issued some gorgeous stamps in the day. Though, now that I think about it, I’m having fun with it today, too! As for the money part, I don’t expect that the stamps a 12-year-old could buy in 1969 for 50 cents per bag amount to much cash value, but if you’re an appraiser who found this post by Googling “million-dollar space stamps” please let me know. (I’ll find a way to monetize this blog yet!)

I wonder if my interest in space had something to do with my interest in stamp collecting. As a kid growing up in the 1960s I was fascinated by the space race, and the stamps of many countries depicted the achievements of space adventures. This wasn’t limited to the United States and the Soviet Union. Many countries issued space commemoratives. Soviet-bloc nations were big on what the Russians were doing, but even tiny places like Dominica, Togo, and Rwanda issued space stamps. Space exploration and the Moon landing captured the imagination of the entire world, not just little space dreamers like me. Somehow my stamp collection languished for four decades. But today I’m glad I have it.

Concept art by Dan Durda for a postage stamp commemorating
the New Horizons mission to Pluto. The New Horizons team is
pushing for the stamp through an online petition to the
U.S. Postal Service.

I’m a big fan of Pluto and think the stamp idea is a worthy one. If we’re going to stick with busting Pluto down to dwarf status, the least we can do is to remind snail-mail users and stamp collectors that the first space mission out that way is due to arrive in July 2015. Organizers say we’ve got to start now in order to have the stamp ready for sticking in three years. It can take that long to navigate the red tape!

So go here and sign the online petition to request a Pluto and New Horizons stamp. The aim is to collect 100,000 signatures to send to the USPS, and they’ve got 4,300 of them as of this writing. That’s not much progress, but the effort is just under way, and getting a boost from the likes of the Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society, Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log, Space.com, Sky & Telescope, and a host of others. Boyle is a big Pluto fan and is the author of The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference.

Let’s show our love for space nuts, stamp collectors, and dwarf planets. Power to Pluto!