[October 29, 2017] Growing up I had a few heroes. Like most of my buddies, we were enthralled by the famous exploits of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, President Teddy Roosevelt, and astronaut John Glenn. Each of these men with their own individual leadership style was a major contributor to the advancement of America’s scientific community.
In February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth and did so in a capsule called Mercury ‘Freedom 7.’1 I remember it well; watching live on our black & white television the scenes of recovery where the capsule landed in the ocean. The next day we “invented” the John Glenn yoyo trick that was three loops around (representing Glenn’s three orbits). Boys and their toys … what fun we had and pride in Colonel Glenn’s achievement.
Only later in college studying engineering did I really get the chance to better understand how the hard work behind the mission to put a man into space. It was something where there were no rules and nothing from the past to go by. The main ingredient that made NASA’s effort successful – besides the technological effort – was great leadership.
The engineering and leadership of those involved in the U.S. space program was an example of thinking outside the boundaries to which we normally confide ourselves. The manpower alone is staggering, although smaller than another major feat of great leadership and technological prowess; the Manhattan Project.
A movie my wife encouraged me to watch recently was Hidden Figures. It highlights the space race and the effort to putting the first American into space. Behind the men who were celebrated for their effort were the many scientists, engineers, and managers with the brainpower to make it all possible. Some of them were a small group of mathematically ingenious black women.2 I highly recommend the movie as it will give a taste of the political and social tensions behind the space race intertwined with the real-life of those women.
John Glenn meets those same women (as we see in the movie) and, of course, encourages their work and relies upon them to give the “right calculations.” John Glenn was no prima donna. He had flown nearly 150 combat missions as a U.S. Marine pilot during World War II and the Korea War. His continued promotion of what we now call STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education was without hesitation. His life depended upon it.
Those well educated, talented, and devoted folks behind the Friendship 7 launch in 1962 are all my heroes; as they should be to any living today. Let’s not forget them.3
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- https://www.nasa.gov/content/astronaut-john-h-glenn-jr-with-mercury-friendship-7-spacecraft
- https://thinkprogress.org/hidden-figures-long-time-coming-db9ed029d5bb/
- Note: On this date, October 29, 1998, at the age of 77 years, John Glenn became the oldest human ever to travel in space. On board the space shuttle Discovery, he was part of a nine-day mission where he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-glenn-returns-to-space