A review by sackofbeans
John Glenn: A Memoir by John Glenn, Nick Taylor
4.0
I have been slowly reading the astronaut and cosmonaut biographies in chronological order by launch date. I had decided I was going to read Glenn's either around February 20th, the anniversary of his launch, or when I got to travel to NASA's Glenn Research center, whichever came first!
As luck would have it I got to travel to NASA's Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio (part of NASA Glenn) while working on NASA's Orion program, during that third week of February! So yes, that was a good time to finally sit down and start reading this book that has been on my shelf for a decade.
The amazing thing about John Glenn, whether you are reading his own accounts or others accounts of him, is that he was a 100% true honest-to-gosh good hard-working caring person who did everything in his power to make the world and himself a better person every day. He definitely deserves the title of "American Hero".
The strange downside to this, as with works of fiction where the protagonist is always 100% lawful good, is that it makes the material not as fun to read. No real personal flaws? Always loyal and committed to the cause? Pfft, more like predictable and boring, amirite?
Well no, not really. It is fun seeing someone like that have great success throughout life, even into his late 70s where he got to fly into space again aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.
I'll say that that the meat of this memoir, the good tasty stuff, is his time in NASA's Mercury program. Reading about him competing to get the astronaut gig, then competing even more to be the first in space, only to get passed over, twice! and be the third to go, for the real first American orbit trip, the one that everyone remembers, is pretty darn enjoyable.
His military career working in the Marines was impressive, a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea? Dang, son. And he did the first supersonic flight over the entire U.S., which earned him a spot on Name That Tune. You got the impression that 'astronaut' was the next logical step in his professional career, good thing they invented that position for him.
Glenn got into politics because NASA, or the government, didn't want to launch him again as that would be risking a national treasure. Sounds like he fought hard for a lot of people, and I'm disappointed he never got the vice or Presidential role. He would have been a hell of a good one.
His time back on the Shuttle was neat. I personally believe his flying again was an inspiring event and got many excited about spaceflight again, but I can still understand how people saw it as an expensive political favor (Glenn fought pretty hard to get Clinton elected) with not a whole lot of scientific merit behind it (he did experiments in space to see if the elderly experienced the same bone and muscle loss as regular astronauts do, but it was a relatively short, less than 10-day flight). At the end of the book he said the results of those experiments weren't done yet, and I haven't heard much more about those results in the 20 years since. Maybe it's just as simple as "Yup, old folks can go into space for short trips, no problem!", which his original journey was to see if human in general could survive in space for a few hours.
Perhaps the greatest thing to pull from this book was that John really loved his wife Annie. Before he went on long trips in his military career he always told her "I'm just going down to the corner store to get a pack of gum." "Don't be long," she'd reply. He told her that before his launch aboard Friendship 7 and aboard Discovery.
I also got a kick out of seeing my hero Henri Landwirth, the founder of Give Kids the World, make a few cameo appearances.
I'll conclude with this quote of his I've always liked:
"I was brought up believing that you are placed on Earth here more or less with a 50-50 proposition, and that is what I still believe. We are placed here with certain talents and capabilities. It is up to each of us to use those talents and capabilities as best you can. If you do that, I think there is a power greater than any of us that will place the opportunities in our way."
As luck would have it I got to travel to NASA's Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio (part of NASA Glenn) while working on NASA's Orion program, during that third week of February! So yes, that was a good time to finally sit down and start reading this book that has been on my shelf for a decade.
The amazing thing about John Glenn, whether you are reading his own accounts or others accounts of him, is that he was a 100% true honest-to-gosh good hard-working caring person who did everything in his power to make the world and himself a better person every day. He definitely deserves the title of "American Hero".
The strange downside to this, as with works of fiction where the protagonist is always 100% lawful good, is that it makes the material not as fun to read. No real personal flaws? Always loyal and committed to the cause? Pfft, more like predictable and boring, amirite?
Well no, not really. It is fun seeing someone like that have great success throughout life, even into his late 70s where he got to fly into space again aboard Space Shuttle Discovery.
I'll say that that the meat of this memoir, the good tasty stuff, is his time in NASA's Mercury program. Reading about him competing to get the astronaut gig, then competing even more to be the first in space, only to get passed over, twice! and be the third to go, for the real first American orbit trip, the one that everyone remembers, is pretty darn enjoyable.
His military career working in the Marines was impressive, a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea? Dang, son. And he did the first supersonic flight over the entire U.S., which earned him a spot on Name That Tune. You got the impression that 'astronaut' was the next logical step in his professional career, good thing they invented that position for him.
Glenn got into politics because NASA, or the government, didn't want to launch him again as that would be risking a national treasure. Sounds like he fought hard for a lot of people, and I'm disappointed he never got the vice or Presidential role. He would have been a hell of a good one.
His time back on the Shuttle was neat. I personally believe his flying again was an inspiring event and got many excited about spaceflight again, but I can still understand how people saw it as an expensive political favor (Glenn fought pretty hard to get Clinton elected) with not a whole lot of scientific merit behind it (he did experiments in space to see if the elderly experienced the same bone and muscle loss as regular astronauts do, but it was a relatively short, less than 10-day flight). At the end of the book he said the results of those experiments weren't done yet, and I haven't heard much more about those results in the 20 years since. Maybe it's just as simple as "Yup, old folks can go into space for short trips, no problem!", which his original journey was to see if human in general could survive in space for a few hours.
Perhaps the greatest thing to pull from this book was that John really loved his wife Annie. Before he went on long trips in his military career he always told her "I'm just going down to the corner store to get a pack of gum." "Don't be long," she'd reply. He told her that before his launch aboard Friendship 7 and aboard Discovery.
I also got a kick out of seeing my hero Henri Landwirth, the founder of Give Kids the World, make a few cameo appearances.
I'll conclude with this quote of his I've always liked:
"I was brought up believing that you are placed on Earth here more or less with a 50-50 proposition, and that is what I still believe. We are placed here with certain talents and capabilities. It is up to each of us to use those talents and capabilities as best you can. If you do that, I think there is a power greater than any of us that will place the opportunities in our way."