The world was such a scary place in 1962 that there were
actually Americans who volunteered to leave it. The Cold War was
at its most chilling. The United States had been embarrassed by
the first Soviet satellite and the first Soviet cosmonaut.
President John F. Kennedy asked his aides if there was something
-- anything -- America could do to beat the Russians in space.
NASA tried, but the Atlantic floor off Cape Canaveral was
littered with the wreckage of failed rockets. America did not
just need better boosters, it needed bigger heroes. It found
seven, the original Mercury astronauts. And the one with whom it
most fell in love was John Glenn. Fifty years ago, on Feb. 20,
1962, Glenn squeezed into his Friendship 7 capsule, circled the
earth three times in five hours and became a national hero.
"Zero-G and I feel fine," he said from his spacecraft. "Man,
that view is tremendous." Historians' descriptions of the time
describe a mood that seems almost alien now: a nation of people
fearful of Soviet attack (the