Space sunrise inspires Glenn

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He also muses on old Mercury days

Monday, November 2, 1998

BY TIM BONFIELD
The Cincinnati Enquirer

John Glenn retrieves a paper airplane for pilot Steve Lindsay, right. (AP - NASA TV photo) | ZOOM |

When John Glenn returned to space Thursday, he was so busy getting out of his spacesuit and stowing gear he didn't get to look out the window for an hour and a half.

But when he finally sailed in zero gravity up to the flight deck to see a sunrise from orbit, his thoughts were cosmic.

"It was truly awesome," Mr. Glenn said. "To look out at this creation and not believe in God is impossible. To see the Earth from this vantage point only strengthens my beliefs."

Mr. Glenn's comments came during a space-to-Earth press conference

held Sunday, about halfway through space shuttle Discovery's nine-day mission. The mission has gone smoothly, including the crucial deployment Sunday of the $11 million Spartan-201 satellite to study the sun.

The oldest man in space at age 77, Mr. Glenn talked about how it felt to blast off again, the value of space exploration, and more Earthly concerns such as international cooperation and getting out to vote. He even took a ribbing from his old buddy Walter Cronkite.

"Commander Brown, is his walker getting in your way up there?" Mr. Cronkite asked.

"John's doing a fantastic job," Cmdr. Curt Brown replied. "Probably the biggest problem I have is that he wants to grab my food . . . but we got that straightened out."

Seeing the beauty of the Middle East when the shuttle passed over Cairo, the capital of Egypt, Mr. Glenn said: "You look down and wonder why we can't solve some of the man-made problems in that tortured part of the world."

Mr. Glenn also noted a sharp difference between the political urgency of the Mercury program to today's more scientific space program.

"When I started out, it was a space race," he said. "In those days, the Soviets were using their superiority in space as a selling point for communism. Now, I'm glad to see that space will be used for an international space station that will allow 16 nations (including Russia) to work together."

Space should be something that binds people together, he said, "not something that separates them."

Even though many Americans have not paid rapt attention to all 91 space shuttle flights since 1981, Mr. Glenn said, the work done aboard those flights will have many more real-world applications than his first flight ever could.

"Back in the days of Mercury we were just trying to see if we could do it or not. Now, this is literally a flying laboratory. We are doing so many things that will benefit people right there on Earth."

For example, work continued on dozens of experiments in the Spacehab module. On Sunday, Mr. Glenn worked on a microencapsulation experiment that could lead to better cancer medications.

The concept is to use static electricity to make multilayered microcapsules. One project using the technology will combine an anti-tumor drug with an immune stimulating drug to create a time-released chemotherapy drug for colon cancer. If successful, the new capsules could allow higher doses of chemotherapy with fewer side effects.

On Sunday night, Mr. Glenn was expected to wear his sleep monitoring harness for the first time. Data from 21 sensor points will track his muscle twitches, brain waves, heart rate and more.

He has already started giving blood and urine samples that will be used to study the effects of space flight on his muscles, bones and immune system.

The idea is to get some useful information about sleep disorders, muscle loss and bone loss, which may lead to better treatments for the effects of aging. Recognizing that he represents only one data point, Mr. Glenn said he hopes the tests on him prove useful enough to keep the studies going once the space station is built.

Meanwhile, the successful launch of the Spartan-201 also will help people on Earth. The Spartan will fly on its own for two days to collect data on solar wind and the solar corona (the outer layer of the sun). On Tuesday, it will hauled back aboard Discovery for return to Earth.

The Spartan project will help scientists better understand how changes in the sun's activities affect communications satellites orbiting Earth. Those satellites affect everything from television programs to cellular phones.

NASA officials had been somewhat anxious about the Spartan launch because last year the satellite spun out of control during deployment. This time, no problems.

In fact, NASA used the Spartan release to test an automatic guidance system that will be used later for docking on the yet-to-be-built International Space Station.

On a more personal note, Mr. Glenn said taking off in the space shuttle felt quite a bit different from his first trip atop an Atlas rocket in 1962.

"It was less of a punch in the back than I thought it would be," Mr. Glenn said.

The shuttle takes off more abruptly than the Atlas did, generating 1.6 G's almost instantly. Yet during the shuttle's eight-minute trip to orbit, the craft does not generate as many G-forces overall as the old rockets did. Mr. Glenn pulled 7.7 G's on his first trip, but just 3 G's this time.

As a result of its smoother ride, the shuttle can carry more sensitive payloads than a higher G-force craft, an important advantage for science missions, he said.

In his final message of the press conference, Mr. Glenn said all the American crew members aboard made a point of turning in absentee ballots for Tuesday's elections.

"I'd like to see a record turnout," Mr. Glenn said. "When you don't get out and vote, you give your franchise to somebody else."