R.I.P John Glenn Ad Astra

Friendship 7  orbiting capsule

The United States was behind in the Space Race against the Soviet Union. Three of the four Atlas rockets test rockets blew up before achieving orbit. The orbiting vehicle  was space capsule which  had the leg room of a Volkswagon Beetle with the aesthetic of a garbage can.  

Still NASA astronaut John Glenn braved the dangers of flying an prototype space vehicle in Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962 and orbited the Earth three times.





Mission Control believed that there was a problem with the heat shield which might cause Glenn to burn up on re-entry. Thus the flight protocol was changed on the fly and Glenn would have to make a manual splashdown. As it turned out, it was merely a malfunctioning gauge. The only harm to Glenn was that the pressure from blowing the hatch slightly cut the astronaut's knuckles through his gloves.

Despite the harried re-entry, the experienced NASA test pilot was poetic in recalling his time in space, harkening to the joy of seeing four sunsets in one day. Later, Glenn was received as a hero in Wall Street with a massive ticker-tape parade, larger than the celebration for Charles Lindberg's flight across the Atlantic. 

Glenn had intended to run for the US Senate in 1964 but had a withdraw due to a concussion. Glenn served as a Senator from Ohio from 1974 to 1999. 

In 1998, Glenn again flew into space on the Discovery Space Shuttle at age 77 to serve as a human guinea pig on geriatrics in space. Glenn is the oldest person to go into space.

Senator John Glenn died at age 95  on December 8, 2016 at Ohio State University's James Cancer Center.

Requiem in pacem ad astra 

Ronald Reagan on the Challenger Disaster

Recalling Christmas Eve At the Moon

 Three NASA astronauts circled the Moon in December 1968 on a mission to prepare for the first human landing on the Moon the next year.  .




When transmitting to Mission Control in Houston, Frank Borman and the crew of Apollo 8  gave a Christmas Eve prayer which might scandalize avowed atheists or today's adherents to the creed of political correctness.

Hillary Clinton on NASA

Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11

Fundamentally Transformed Illustrated?

On the campaign trail in 2008, Michelle Obama made headlines when she uttered that she had not previously been proud of America.  But when she was campaigning in Puerto Rico, the future First Lady revealed her vision of how America had to fundamentally change "for the children" of course.

After five and a half years of the Obama Administration, certain policies illustrate how our President is seeking to fundamentally transform America.

A quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi popular with the "Si, se puede" crowd is:  "Be the change that you wish to see in the world."  But considering illustrated Obama actions, one wonders.  Gutting of our space program to be Muslim outreach; transforming the IRS into a political weapon against domestic "enemies"; Obamacare rules which entice businesses to convert employees into part time workers to dump them into public health exchanges; and overwhelming the U.S. Border Patrol with a flood of OTM illegal immigrants along with hamstringed rules which basically turns them into babysitters.

 It would seem that a Pogo-ism is more apropos: "We have met the enemy and it is US."

We are not destined to such flummoxing funny paper fortunes if enough of us can be drawn away from digital bread and circuses and act upon what is truly important and consistent to our time tested values. 

h/t: A.F. Branco

The Sounds of Space

The Space Shuttles were retired after 30 years of service in 2011.  Since the surviving shuttles made their final trips to the District of Calamity (sic), New York City and Southern California to rest in museums, there have not been new sounds from the American Manned Space Program.

But NASA has released High Definition video footage taken from the point of view of a Solid Booster Rocket.  The gauge in the upper right corner is the airspeed of the spacecraft.

What really makes this this film interesting is that the sound was remastered by Skywalker Sound. The video dramatically capture the release of a Solid Rocket Booster being released in the atmosphere at 150,000 feet falling to Earth.




The high fidelity audio captures haunting moans and eerie rattling hints of a horror show. But Hollywood has molded us to believe that in space no one can hear you scream.