Back in orbit

It is hard to imagine a word more overused and less understood than the simple "hero"

It is hard to imagine a word more overused and less understood than the simple "hero". The word itself desperately tries to help us comprehend its meaning. The sound of it . . . breathy, two noble vowels in courageous proximity, daring our imaginations to inhabit the word, perhaps even to trespass. And yet . . .

In 1959, the Gallup Poll asked American teenagers to choose the people they most admired. They picked John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, and Winston Churchill. Of the women, they chose Jacqueline Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt and Helen Keller.

The same poll in 1991 produced a "most admired" list of basketball players Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, George and Barbara Bush, singer Paula Abdul and actress Julia Roberts. By 1994, Pope John Paul II had barely made it into inclusion.

We do not, to overstate the obvious, live in an age of heroes, as nearly anyone might understand the term. It is not, moreover, a time of originality or of courage. As Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter put it, our whole era sometimes seems like a pale photocopy of real history. Today's youth missed the Kennedy assassination; they got the Princess Diana crash. One reason the computer revolution is so exciting is that it represents authentic history being made in our lifetimes, not another anniversary of something big we missed.

READ MORE

Something big we missed. Enter John Glenn. It is February 20th, 1962, 9.47 a.m. Taunted during the Cold War that Americans were sleeping under a Soviet moon, the US sends the Friend- ship 7, a tiny capsule barely larger than a comfy upholstered livingroom chair, into space, where it and its inhabitant John Glenn orbit Earth for a little more than five hours. Millions of people who had not yet heard their first Beatles album watched black and white televisions as the capsule then fell to earth, its designers - and John Glenn - praying that its heat shield would survive re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.

A genuine hero, the first American to orbit Earth, emerged from that capsule in the Atlantic Ocean. A Presbyterian plumber's son, a man who, the world would learn during real ticker-tape parades in New York City, had been a courageous Marine fighter pilot in the second World War, a man who had killed Nazis and later downed Communist MiGs in Korea.

From that day, John Glenn wanted to go back into space, to look back on a fragile blue planet as only a few have. After 18 months of failed lobbying, Glenn quit NASA in disgust. Years later he would learn that his friend John Kennedy was one of the people who prevented his return to space, too afraid of another risky trip and the dangers that might befall an American icon.

This year, on October 29th, John Glenn will get his chance. He is 77 years old and, shockingly, still a hero. A distinguished US Senator from the mid-west state of Ohio for 24 years, Glenn has been faithfully married for 55 years to Annie, the woman he says is the love of his life. He has two grandsons. He has led a life unmarred by scandal and now he wants to go back into space not, he says, for glory, but for science. On that morning, Senator Glenn will join six other crew members in a nine-day mission aboard the spacecraft Discovery.

This time, the experiment is not survival. This time, in addition to the launch of a Spartan satellite to take readings of the sun, and a testing of components for the Hubble Telescope, one of the missions aboard the Discovery will be Glenn himself. He will be there as a human laboratory, catherised and monitored 24 hours a day, for a look into human ageing. He will swallow a thermometer the size of a horse pill that will take readings as it passes through his body at night. Doctors on Earth will monitor his blood and his immune system function and his protein levels. Critics says the mission is an experiment in nostalgia. But first to the science, which Glenn and his supporters defend.

There are at least 50 ways in which weightless space travel can affect the body, including cardiovascular changes, muscle loss, blood chemistry, and loss of bone mass. With 34 million Americans over the age of 65 - and that number is due to triple in the next 50 years - Glenn managed, after a long period of stealthy lobbying, to convince the powers-that-be at NASA that sending an old man into space had research merit.

It was while reading a space physiology book in 1995 that the thought of another trip occurred to Glenn. But 20 years in politics had taught him that a direct approach was wrong. Instead, he began contacting a few NASA scientists informally, wondering about research into the geriatric-astronaut parallel. By January of this year, he had got the all-clear from NASA. The next problem would be his wife.

After 149 combat missions, Annie had had enough. The couple had grown up together and their parents had been close. Stoic and always at Glenn's side, Annie had a profound stutter that kept her from assuming a public speaking role during the height of his fame. Only 20 years ago she learned of a programme that helped her conquer her stutter. Anyone who might think space shuttles are now completely safe and routine need only recall the Challenger disaster 10 years ago in which school teacher Christa McAuliffe died. After much prodding, Annie decided to support Glenn's wishes.

And so he will board Discovery. Instead of the 36 cubic feet he had in 1962, his new home will have 332 cubic feet for each crew member. Last time there were no computers, a single window, and 56 toggle switches. This time he will be feathered with five computers on board, 10 windows, 856 toggle switches, and a woman, Chiaki Mukai, a doctor who four years ago became the first female Japanese astronaut.

FOR the past six weeks, Glenn has been in Houston, training for the flight. By all accounts it has been gruelling. There have been practice evacuations and simulated accidents. Glenn is remarkably fit, but everyone notices he is a little slower than his counterparts getting in and out of the capsule.

At one stage last week, an irritated Glenn castigated reporters for failing to focus on the real science of the mission, for concentrating on the gee whiz aspects. This is science at its very best out there - on the cutting edge, he said. Not everyone agrees.

Some biologists have claimed the Glenn trip is little more than NASA's - indeed America's - attempt to recapture a time of greatness. John Pike, director of space policy for the Federation of American Scientists, told the New York Times he wished they would not confuse the issue with all this foolishness about medical research.

It seems somewhat beside the point, doesn't it? Americans could again celebrate February 20th, the anniversary of something they missed in 1962. And yes, they can lament the absence of a brand new hero, an original for our time. Fair enough. But given what Americans have to work with right now . . . Bill Clinton as President, Bruce Willis a movie star, Madonna an icon, Bill Gates the master of the universe . . . Uncertain, as William Gass once wrote, of where to send their luggage, perhaps it is not surprising that America is again excited about John Glenn going into space, hinting at a new possibility for the future.