Sen. John Glenn prepares for a training session at Johnson Space Center in Houston in August. (AP)

By Kathy Sawyer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 25, 1998; Page A1

Eight months ago, when he joined the crew of the space shuttle Discovery, John Glenn vowed, "It's not going to be 'the John Glenn flight.' "

In some parallel universe, maybe. But in the real world, where the winged space plane is being readied for departure from a Florida launch pad this Thursday, its weightiest cargo is the Glenn factor. The personal appeal of the 77-year-old space pioneer and the resonant symbolism of his adventure have triggered a public relations coup far beyond the expectations of even the most publicity-hungry NASA official. As the limelight has intensified to a level reminiscent of the early, heady days of spaceflight, so have the pressures on flight teams, Glenn's crew mates and of course Glenn himself.

The presence of the freckled icon – a combat hero and America's first man in orbit – has made NASA the target of heightening concerns about the risky business it is in: not only the myriad technical dangers of flying aboard the most complex space machine ever built, but the extra risks that apply to a 77-year-old – even one whose body is as well-maintained and has been as thoroughly studied as Glenn's. And the Glenn factor has made the crew's normally grueling training schedule even more stressful than usual, producing some testy moments as the '90s cult of celebrity has collided with the insular, workaholic, press-averse culture of the astronaut corps.

To his admirers, Glenn has become a kind of hero for all seasons. In two shooting wars, he was the fearless fighter pilot. In the Cold War, he was the single combat warrior riding to the nation's rescue in the heavens, and now, in the miasma of scandal that disturbs the peace, here he comes again. As a fit, clean-living but adventurous septuagenarian, a soldier for geriatric science, he also serves as a powerful role model for the elderly and an advance man for the huge phalanx of baby boomers marching toward their golden years.

To some, Glenn's flight is variously a publicity circus, a distraction from real concerns facing the space program, an ego-boosting junket for a powerful senator, or an unwarranted risk to a living legend.

"I've been trying to figure out why the public reaction is so intense," said historian Alex Roland of Duke University, a longtime critic of NASA. "I've decided it's a nostalgia trip ... back to a time when it looked like an exciting new world was opening up" in contrast to "today's dull prospects" for human spaceflight.

Glenn knew the whole thing had gotten out of hand, he said in a recent interview in Houston, one morning when he headed for work at the Johnson Space Center, home base of the astronaut corps. He found the approach route, a funky shopping and eating strip always known simply as NASA Road 1, lined with red, white and blue banners bearing his picture and proclaiming it John Glenn Memorial Parkway. "I couldn't believe it!" Glenn shook his head. (NASA officials say it was not them, but the local Chamber of Commerce that put up the banners.)

President Clinton plans to fly to Cape Canaveral Thursday, becoming the first U.S. president to witness a launch of the unique, reusable space plane. Fellow Democrat Glenn, in his day job as a U.S. senator, has been a loyal political ally of Clinton. A sizable contingent from Congress is expected at the cape to cheer Glenn on, having just passed a provision to name a NASA facility in Cleveland after him as he retires from the Senate after 24 years. Also on the list of VIP attendees are "Titanic" star Leonardo DiCaprio, actor Pierce Brosnan and rock group Aerosmith.

Fans will be able to snap up miniature Glenns in sets of three. The "action figures," the latest in the Mattel Inc.'s "Hot Wheels" series, features one version of Glenn in his Senate business suit and tie, one in the shuttle flight suit and a third in the 1962 vintage silver suit he wore when he blasted into orbit – and into history. At about $9.00, the kit includes small models of the shuttle and the Mercury capsule, Friendship 7.

Local officials are braced for launch-day gridlock on the highways, causeways, RV parks and beaches around Kennedy Space Center, as tourists gravitate to the highly publicized event. Thousands of reporters from around the world have requested credentials, and the launch complex press site has already begun to fill up with some 75 satellite trucks and 40 big trailers in addition to the permanent news facilities. CNN alone has moved in 10 trailers – and Walter Cronkite. The Fox network has the hero of Apollo 13, James Lovell. (Tom Hanks, who played him in the movie, can't make the launch, NASA says.)

While Glenn is clearly having the time of his life, with citizens accosting him for autographs wherever he goes, most modern astronauts have grown accustomed to soaring in near anonymity. This is no longer the era of "square-jawed American heroes working alone in space," noted Discovery flight director Phil Engelauf, emphasizing the importance of teamwork in today's orbital scheme.

Discovery commander Curt Brown will be making his fifth shuttle flight, and Pedro Duque (pronounced doo-kay), of the European Space Agency, will become the first Spaniard in space, if all goes well Thursday. Duque quipped that he is the John Glenn of his country, and his crew mates have nicknamed him "Juan Glenn." (The King of Spain is also expected to attend the launch, so Duque will not be entirely neglected.) Also on board will be Chiaki Mukai, a cardiovascular surgeon who in 1994 became the first Japanese woman in space.

Inside the cloistered astronaut hierarchy, the U.S. senator from Ohio is merely payload specialist No. 2 and the next-to-least-experienced member of the crew. He has joked that he ranks just above the toadfish that will be flying into orbit to serve, like him, as guinea pigs.

Glenn himself, though accustomed to being a star, is not the problem, said crew commander Brown. "There is no ego there. He is just happy to be on the team."

And it's not that the other crew members want the attention for themselves, either. "Speaking personally, I didn't become an astronaut for the publicity," said Discovery pilot Steve Lindsey, an Air Force test pilot. "If Glenn gives us a platform to get the message out, great."

The problem, Brown said in a recent interview, is that the nonstop media assault has sometimes threatened to swamp the normal training regimen that shuttle commanders rely on to meld a flock of assertive individuals into a team that can function smoothly and safely under a variety of unpredictable conditions.

"I can't give my crew enough credit for hanging in there, because it has been a lot more work," Brown said. "You not only had to work for the payload but you had to work preparing for the media. ... This will also be true during the flight and after the flight."

NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, who early this year finally succumbed to Glenn's relentless urging that he be approved for a second flight after 36 years, said that for him, too, dealing with the Glenn factor "has taken a disproportionate amount of time I had not anticipated."

Glenn at Cape Canaveral, Fla., just before his historic three-lap flight around the Earth in February 1962. (File/AP)

Glenn has repeatedly castigated the press for devoting so much attention to him. The focus, he argues, should be on the more than 80 science experiments to be carried out during the nine-day flight. Brown said of Glenn's outbursts, "John is honestly excited about the science" and thinks NASA could do more "to get the word out." Routine shuttle science missions often get little or no news coverage beyond the photogenic blastoff.

In addition to the toadfish and a flock of cockroaches and other small research packages, the crew's task list includes deployment of a small spacecraft called Spartan 201 to study the sun, and tests of instruments that will later be installed on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.

Glenn is to be a test subject in at least 10 experiments examining physiological changes common to young astronauts in space and elderly people on the ground. Unlike the elderly, however, the space travelers recover soon after returning from weightlessness, and researchers hope to find out how. These effects include loss of muscle mass and bone density, disruptions in sleep patterns, depressed immune system and loss of balance.

The in-flight regimen will be arduous, by all accounts. For the sleep experiment, spanning several nights, Glenn's complex headgear alone will take 45 minutes to put on and check out each time, said mission specialist Scott Parazynski, a medical doctor and stress expert who will work closely with Glenn.

Parazynski, Glenn observed, "is the one that comes at me with a needle. I've referred to him as Igor. ... On the shuttle, you can float, but you can't hide."

The original plan had been to insert a catheter into Glenn's arm and leave it in to avoid repeated needle sticks, but Parazynski said, "that turned out to be an inconvenience." Instead, he will stick Glenn 12 times with a small needle to draw blood samples over several days. Glenn also will provide regular saliva and urine samples, swallow small transmitters and carry out other procedures.

However, while Glenn has promoted his on-board research aggressively, he (like most astronauts, to the frustration of the media) has insisted on his right to confidentiality when it comes to his medical data and physical reactions during the flight. "I'm planning on everything being in good shape," he said, "but let's see what happens."

For one thing, he said, he can't be sure he won't require the use of his barf bag. (Upwards of half of all astronauts reaching orbit, including experienced test pilots, suffer temporary motion sickness; and a previous congressional shuttle passenger, Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), has become famous in NASA circles for his extensive contributions to this area of research. His plight kept him literally Velcroed to the crew cabin wall for much of his seven-day flight in 1985.)

Glenn and NASA officials most recently invoked the traditional privacy policies in refusing to disclose why, last August, researchers found that Glenn did not meet one of the requirements for a portion of the sleep study. The problem, they said, did not affect his fitness for flight duty or participation in any other experiments.

Many of the questions flying at Glenn and his crew mates have concerned the risks of his potential death or illness while aboard the shuttle, particularly during the highest stress phases – ascent and reentry. The crew will experience three times Earth's gravity on the way up (Glenn felt 7.7 G's during his first flight). Once they reach orbit, the fluids in their bodies will shift, their faces will puff up and their legs thin. During the space plane's fiery reentry into Earth's atmosphere, scheduled for Nov. 7, they will feel the returning force of gravity.

"NASA has addressed and acknowledged the fact that there is a higher risk for a 77-year-old ... and tried to minimize any impact in favor of the science return we expect to get," said Engelauf, the flight director.

Glenn had to pass the same physical standards as younger astronauts and go through all the standard emergency training, including climbing in and out of the orbiter simulators, bailing out, climbing through upper windows and rappelling, jumping into water – all wearing a heavy flight suit. The usual medical emergency precautions will be in place, including an on-board defibrillator to deal with heart irregularities.

Parazynski, who practices at a local emergency room in Houston a couple of times a month, said he will look out for his crew mates during the flight as he always does, Glenn included. "This is the best job in the universe, and to be able to fly with one of the people who got it all started still amazes me."

Shuttle crew members are all volunteers, as they frequently remind their interrogators. And the technical peril associated with riding a barely controlled 4.5 million pound bomb into the sky is quite familiar to Glenn, a former Marine fighter pilot who survived 149 combat missions during two wars before climbing atop the still-experimental Atlas rocket in 1962. He has acknowledged having some difficulty persuading his wife, Annie, and other family members that this final fling in space would not be one mission too many. For some shuttle-watchers, Glenn's high visibility evokes anxious memories of the 1986 Challenger disaster, in which New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe perished with six others.

Based on the shuttle's record, Glenn said, he considers the space plane much safer than the Atlas he rode in 1962. Back then, Glenn noted, the research goals were limited to finding out if humans could survive and function in space at all. Today, "We are on the cutting edge. ... What I am doing, I hope, is to show the value of this research, so that they will continue with this look into this new area of geriatrics."

Many scientists argue that research findings based on a single individual – especially such an exceptional one – cannot be very meaningful. Some compare the situation to case reports on people in extreme environments, such as the summit of Mount Everest, where large samples are not feasible.

"People say well you're just going to be a data point of one," Glenn said. "Well, where do you start data collection: with a data point of one. And I'm hoping that several years from now we'll have a data point number 12 or 15, and then you'll have a real base."

But NASA officials so far have no plans to fly any more elderly astronauts. In any case, the drama of Grandfather Glenn's return to space has never depended only on the research. Discovery mission specialist Steve Robinson analyzed the public fascination this way. "The realization of a dream is something that captures the attention of all of us. The more unlikely the dream, the more it captures us."

Robinson, who will be sitting next to Glenn in the mid-deck when Discovery thunders skyward, said he is looking forward to the very private thrill of the moment when they reach orbit and go weightless. "It'll be a real honor to give him his first zero-G handshake. There was no one there to do it the first time."