ROCKET MAN

October 28, 1998
		Sen. John Glenn, the first American man to orbit the Earth, returns to space aboard the shuttle Discovery. Elizabeth Farnsworth discusses the historic mission with NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin.

Oct. 28, 1998: Phil Ponce gets the historical perspective on the flight. March 6, 1998: NASA scientist Alan Binder discusses the new discovery of water on the moon. Feb. 27, 1998: Is the universe is evolving more rapidly now than it has in the past? Jan. 16, 1998: Details of Senator John Glenn's planned trip back into orbit at age 77. Oct. 15, 1997: NASA begins its seven year mission to explore Saturn. Oct. 2, 1997: Forty years after Sputnik first circled the Earth, historians examine its impact. Sept. 30, 1997: An interview with Mir astronauts. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Science     NASA Web site PBS's John Glenn Special Shuttle Countdown Online	KWAME HOLMAN: In recent weeks, most pre-launch attention has focused on just one of the space shuttle Discovery's seven crew members -- John Glenn. At age 77, Glenn is preparing for second space flight. His first is the historic trip of February 1962 -- when he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
	Return to space
	Thirty-six years ago -- Glenn was strapped into Friendship 7 alone. Following by less than a year, the pioneering orbital voyage of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, Glenn circled the earth three times in a bottle-shaped capsule. He was supposed to make seven loops but mechanical problems cut short the mission. Nonetheless, when his capsule dropped into the Atlantic Ocean, John Glenn became a national hero, and his nation gave him a hero's due. But tomorrow's mission will be typical of the post Cold War era, based on science, rather than the space race. Though Glenn now is a United States senator, he holds the lowest designation among crew members -- PS2, or payload specialist number two. His job will be to take part in experiments on the effects of weightlessness on the human body and what clues they may hold to aging on earth. Largely because of Glenn, the Kennedy Space Center's press site is teeming with close to four thousand reporters and satellite trucks from around the world. NASA predicts the largest crowd ever to witness at Cape Canaveral. At a brief welcoming ceremony Monday at the space center's landing strip, Glenn said this about all the attention. SEN. JOHN GLENN: I have been pleasantly surprised at the outpouring of interest in this flight. And it's really gratifying to see people so fired up about the space program again and about their interest in it. And this is going to be a very research-rich flight. KWAME HOLMAN: Liftoff for Discovery's nine-day mission is set for 2 p.m. tomorrow. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And joining us now is NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. Thanks for being with us. DAN GOLDIN: It's a pleasure being here. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Is everything on schedule for the 2 p.m. launch? DAN GOLDIN: We're on schedule. The weather looks great in Florida. But people always think of Florida. We need to think about Benguria in Morocco, which is an abort landing site. We want to watch Benguria and see if there are heavy winds there, because if there are heavy winds, we don't launch. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And is there some indication there might be? DAN GOLDIN: There were as of yesterday. It looks okay today, but we want to watch it very closely.
	Risks?
	ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about security concerns? The AP reported today that security was tightened at Cape Canaveral today because of threats against the president and against John Glenn and the other astronauts. What can you tell us about that? DAN GOLDIN: Safety is NASA's number one priority especially for innocent civilians. We intentionally increased the security at Cape Kennedy because we want to have people go to the launch in confidence. And it'll be a little inconvenient, there'll be some traffic jams, but we're doing it because we're concerned about safety. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You called Senator Glenn once "the most tenacious human on the planet." He pursued this very tenaciously, didn't he? DAN GOLDIN: Unbelievable. I'd call him tenacious to the second power, to the third power today. He just keeps moving forward. He's intense. He's deeply committed to this mission. He studies longer and harder than people I've met in my life. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And he pushed very hard you, I mean, for a couple of years -- DAN GOLDIN: Yes, he did. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Right? DAN GOLDIN: But I laid the line down and I said you will not fly unless it is safe; you will not fly unless you pass the most rigorous physical ever; and you won't fly until the National Institutes of Health director calls me and says it's meritorious peer-reviewed science. I didn't think he'd do it. He did. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How do you explain all the interest? More than 3,000 journalists, you said, have asked for credentials. DAN GOLDIN: Four thousand. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Four thousand. And there are 70 members of Congress - the President will be there. How do you explain all the interest? DAN GOLDIN: America is about taking risk. America is about heroes. And this is not to say we don't need sports heroes, and entertainers, and rock stars. This man is a genuine hero to people. Young and old alike are excited. I was out in California. Schoolchildren that were seven and eight years old knew about him. It did my heart good to hear this. America needs good, clean heroes like John Glenn.
	Real science?
	ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: As you well know, NASA has gotten its fair share of criticism about this, and I could sort of group them into three areas, if you'd respond, please. DAN GOLDIN: Sure. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: One is, is that this is pure PR, a way to stimulate interest in NASA at a time of perhaps declining funding. DAN GOLDIN: Declining funding isn't the issue. We're proud that we have less funding at NASA. When the budget doubled from '83 to '92, we had two interplanetary missions. With a smaller budget, we're flying one interplanetary mission every 11 weeks. This isn't about PR. This is about two issues: science, the aging population in America is going up. What happens to astronauts in space, and what happens to aging people on the ground might have some correlation. That's why we're doing this. But secondly, Senator Glenn is owed a second flight by America. He came back from space and was told he's too precious a hero; he can't fly. America could take risk, so we're going to fly him. That's why we're flying him. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about the science? Part of the criticism is that the science is not really serious, that he can't take part in one of the main experiments he'd hoped to take part in about melatonin, the hormone, and the critics say that this is not real science, and that it's embarrassing for NASA to pretend it is; that it should just be a mission of the sort you had described a second ago. DAN GOLDIN: I invite the critics to go through the ten peer-reviewed science projects Senator Glenn is going to perform. He is performing 10 experiments -- depressed immune system, muscle loss, bone loss, sleep disorders. He's doing two of the three sleep disorder experiments. The next largest number of experiments will be done by Steve Robinson, six. So they're focusing on one element of one experiment. But there's a broad range. Think about immune system suppression. When you get older, stresses bring viruses in your body that have been suppressed for years out. Same thing may happen in space. We're going to study what happens to the Herpes virus, and maybe we'll learn a little bit more about what stress-induced activities do to the virus activity in the body. This is important. This is important.
	Dangers because of his age?
	ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Are there special dangers because of his age? DAN GOLDIN: There's a little extra risk, but when we take a look at the scientific merit, the rewards outweigh the risk. I'll tell you one little issue. Senator Glenn didn't do stretching exercises during his life, and he found when he was crawling around the shuttle, he wasn't as flexible as he could be. He regretted that. So we want to know what's going to happen. Will he have the same balance disorders he had when he was on the flight when he was 36 years younger? It may be better; it may be worse. What happens to sleep disorders? He sleeps well on the ground. Will he sleep well in space? All these things will come out. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about the danger of the shuttle not having had many trips this year? Some people have said that if it doesn't travel more often, people on the ground actually get a little rusty. DAN GOLDIN: Well, we had a two-year down period when we lost the Challenger, and we had to return to flight. And then in 1990, we were down for an even longer period in-between the launch of the Hubbell and the Ulysses spacecraft. But we have done some incredible things. We have some real increased training and simulations. And we took advantage of the down time -- change the software -- to make the shuttle safer. This is not like flying on an airplane -- you know the 8:10 out of National. This is a developmental flight. We have an outstanding crew of people. I'm so proud of them. They're doing the best. But there's always a finite risk. There's no guarantee. And when we announced Senator Glenn, I keep saying -- he wants me to call him "John" and I can't -- when we announced Senator Glenn I said there's a fine possibility, and he knows it, that he might not come back. But he goes just like every other astronaut because we see the benefits far outweigh the risk.
	End of an era
	ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: We're about to talk to some -- Phil Ponce is going to talk to some historians to put this in historical context. How do you see NASA today as opposed to then -- '62? DAN GOLDIN: Vibrant and alive with a vision of opening up the space frontier. I view this as the closing bookend of phase one of America's space program. It's ironic. Senator Glenn opened it up with Alan Shepard 36 years ago, and here he is on the last flight before we build the international space station November 20th. It's a very historic moment. And you know what we're going to do? We're going to have colonies on Mars. We're going to send probes to the stars. We're going to see if we're alone in this universe. We'll have predictive models of the weather, seasonal to interannual to multidecadal, and we'll enrich life for America and the world. ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Dan Goldin, thanks very much for being with us. DAN GOLDIN: My pleasure.