Table of Contents Rocket Man 1 Chapter 1 All-American Boy 7 Chapter 2 Up Up and Away 17 Chapter 3 Faster Than a Speeding Bullet 27 Chapter 4 Becoming an Astronaut 35 Chapter 5 The Star Sailors 41 Chapter 6 Mean Machines 47 Chapter 7 Into the Space Age 61 Chapter 8 Waiting Game 67 Chapter 9 The Mission 75 Chapter 10 Flying-by-Wire 83 Chapter 11 Just the Normal Day in Space 91 Chapter 12 One American Legend 99 Space Explorers 109
AUTHOR’S NOTE John Glenn was my childhood hero I still remember sitting in my elementary school cafeteria to watch his Mercury flight on the school’s one black-and white TV Glenn’s reentry into the atmosphere was edge of-the-seat suspenseful since the TV audience knew before he did that the heat shield might be down I loved Glenn because of his courage and daring but also because he reminded me of my father another bald handsome ex-Marine who had fought the Japanese in the South Pacific and was nicknamed Bud To this day I cannot see Glenn’s picture without thinking of my dad To write this book I relied primarily on John Glenn’s own memoir the astronauts collective account We Seven and a transcript of the actual Friendship 7 flight I took dialogue verbatim from the transcript and in a few instances from Glenn’s book as well One of the best accounts of the Mercury Project is Tom Wolfe’s brilliant book The Right Stuff It was made into an excellent movie that older children as well as adults can enjoy R A
Rocket Man It was one-thirty in the morning February 20 1962 John Glenn was wide-awake in his bunk in the crew quarters at Cape Canaveral Florida Today was the day He was finally going into space after three years of training and waiting It would all come down to the next few hours Ever since Glenn had been chosen as a Mercury astronaut in America’s brand-new space program his life had been on fast forward He’d loved every minute of training from the sessions in the flight simulator to the meetings with President John Kennedy The only thing he didn’t like were the endless delays Glenn’s flight had already been canceled ten times mostly on account of bad weather Once he had even waited in the tiny space capsule for five hours before
