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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast, George

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Speaker 1: nor back with you, Jeff secchil with us, Jess. These

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Speaker 1: astronauts are competitive. I was talking to a friend of

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Speaker 1: Buzz Aldron's last week and Buzz really wanted to be

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Speaker 1: the first man on the moon. Sure he did, He

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Speaker 1: famously did, and I think it was tough for him

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Speaker 1: not to be. I talked to my kids about it

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Speaker 1: sometimes and they say, he's right there. He was only

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Speaker 1: a couple of minutes later. But I think it's a

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Speaker 1: tough thing to take. Yeah, sure it was. Now what

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Speaker 1: made you Keyan on John Glenn for the book Mercury Rising, Well,

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Speaker 1: Glenn was really the star attraction of the Mercury seven.

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Speaker 1: There was something about his personality that really shone more

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Speaker 1: brightly than any of the others, and in fact his

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Speaker 1: flight did as well. And I really wanted to understand

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Speaker 1: what made him tick. You know, I had seen the

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Speaker 1: right stuff. Of course, like so many people, I had

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Speaker 1: read the book. I'd read that a lot of the

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Speaker 1: popular accounts, and Glenna's has always described the same way

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Speaker 1: as a boy scout as a Sunday school teacher, as

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Speaker 1: kind of a prem guy, and it seemed to me

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Speaker 1: that there was some truth to all that, and yet

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Speaker 1: there had to be more to John Glenner. He never

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Speaker 1: would have been able to achieve what he achieved. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this was not just a Sunday school teacher and a scout.

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Speaker 1: This was actually the most decorated combat veteran of all

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Speaker 1: of the Mercury Seven. Some of the other astronauts hadn't

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Speaker 1: even fought in combat. Alan Shepherd had not fought in combat,

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Speaker 1: and it was sort of a sore spot for him.

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Speaker 1: But Glenn had fought in World War Two. He had

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Speaker 1: flown course stairs in the South Pacific, and he had

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Speaker 1: fought in Korea as well and shot down a number

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Speaker 1: of MiGs and was well on his way toward becoming

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Speaker 1: a flying ace when the war ended. That was his

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Speaker 1: great disappointment at the end of the war, was that

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Speaker 1: he didn't have time to to rack up more kills,

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Speaker 1: and he was quite frank about what he was there

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Speaker 1: to do. He was not there to have fun. He

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Speaker 1: was there to get a job done, and he was

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Speaker 1: pretty fierce in getting it done. The original Mercury seven

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Speaker 1: astronauts they're all dead now, but most of them did

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Speaker 1: not get along with John Blenn, did they They did not.

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Speaker 1: Scott Carpenter did, and they had a close relationship, the

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Speaker 1: two of them, but the other five really kept their

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Speaker 1: distance from Glenn. There were a couple of reasons for this.

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Speaker 1: One was his celebrity. I mean the fact that that

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Speaker 1: Glenn was actually famous before he was an astronaut. Glenn

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Speaker 1: had become famous in fifty seven, so a couple of

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Speaker 1: years before the astronauts were chosen. He had become famous

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Speaker 1: as a test pilot who had set a speed record

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Speaker 1: flying a jet from Los Angeles to Brooklyn in three

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Speaker 1: hours and twenty three minutes. He wound up on the

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Speaker 1: front page of every newspaper in America. He wound up

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Speaker 1: a contestant on Name That Tune, a very popular game

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Speaker 1: show on CBS, and was on primetime week after week

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Speaker 1: in his uniform, charming America. So when Glenn re emerges

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Speaker 1: in fifty nine as an astronaut, he's already a star,

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Speaker 1: and he's also the most at ease in front of

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Speaker 1: the cameras, and the cameras just loved him. He was funny,

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Speaker 1: he was relaxed, he was humble. He would talk about

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Speaker 1: his family, he would talk about his faith, and the

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Speaker 1: others were pretty tight lipped fighter jocks. They were there

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Speaker 1: to fly, They were not there to charm the the

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Speaker 1: newsreel cameras. But but, but Glenn was there to do both.

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Speaker 1: And they resented it, and frankly, they resented it for

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Speaker 1: the rest of their lives. If you read their their memoirs,

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Speaker 1: they talk about that very first press conference and they

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Speaker 1: feel that Glenn was hamming it up. And maybe he was,

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Speaker 1: maybe he wasn't, but they were not capable of doing that,

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Speaker 1: and they resented it. Well. He was a consummate politician

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Speaker 1: because when he got elected to the Senate in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy four, he was a shoe in. But he was

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Speaker 1: very comfortable in speaking engagements. He was he was somebody

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Speaker 1: who had been in front of the cameras. By seventy four,

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Speaker 1: he'd been in front of the cameras for almost a

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Speaker 1: couple of decades, and so he was not awed by

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Speaker 1: any of that. He was not in need of attention.

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Speaker 1: This was not the first time he was at center stage,

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Speaker 1: and so he had that sense of confidence. He really

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Speaker 1: had his feet very much on the ground. Why do

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Speaker 1: you think it was a stroke of luck that Glenn

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Speaker 1: followed Shepherd and Grissom. Well, Shepherd and Grissom flew what

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Speaker 1: were called suborbital flights, and Jeff Bezos is about to

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Speaker 1: take one of those next month on the new Shepherd rocket,

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Speaker 1: and then Richard Branson they're gonna try to race each other.

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Speaker 1: I guess that's right in the new space race. But

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Speaker 1: a suborbital flight is exactly that. It doesn't get into

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Speaker 1: orbit because they were riding a rocket, the Redstone, that

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Speaker 1: was not powerful enough to push a capsule with a

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Speaker 1: human being on it into orbit. And that rocket, the

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Speaker 1: Atlas rocket, just wasn't ready yet. It had all sorts

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Speaker 1: of problems, it was exploding on the launch pad, and

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Speaker 1: the US program was not ready to send a man

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Speaker 1: into orbit. So Sheppard and Grissom had to settle for

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Speaker 1: these fifteen minute flights where they went up and they

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Speaker 1: fell down and that was that. And Glenn was actually

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Speaker 1: in line third for another one of these flights. But

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Speaker 1: by this point the Russians now had not had orbited

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Speaker 1: not just one but two of their cosmonauts, and it

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Speaker 1: had just become too embarrassing for NASA to continue to

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Speaker 1: do these what they called short shots, and they had

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Speaker 1: to accelerate the orbital program. But there were still very

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Speaker 1: serious worries about that as rocket that I mentioned that

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Speaker 1: it just wasn't ready and it wasn't going to get ready.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, even on the eve of John Glenn's flight,

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Speaker 1: the president of Conver Astronautics, which was the company that

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Speaker 1: built the Atlas rocket, would only allowed that it had

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Speaker 1: a four and five chance of succeeding one and five

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Speaker 1: chances of something horrible happening to John Glenn. Now, Shepherd

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Speaker 1: and Grisom, didn't they go above with a red Stone rocket.

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Speaker 1: They briefly went into space. They were waitless for a

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Speaker 1: few minutes, and then gravity kicks in and they came

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Speaker 1: just straight down. They were not able to actually get

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Speaker 1: high enough to get into orbit and to walk into

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Speaker 1: orbit encounters. But they had Redstone rockets that got them

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Speaker 1: up there, right, that's right, though, those were Redstone rockets,

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Speaker 1: that's right. But Glenn was the first to ride that

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Speaker 1: Atlas remarkable, just a remarkable story. And he never was

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Speaker 1: in Gemini, which was the duel ships. He was not

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Speaker 1: in Gemini. He would have liked to be, and he

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Speaker 1: stuck around because he expected that, of course, he would

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Speaker 1: get back in the rotation. That was always the plan.

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Speaker 1: It was never supposed to be one and done. But

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Speaker 1: the resentment to the other astronauts felt toward Glenn was

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Speaker 1: not limited to the astronaut and some of the NASA

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Speaker 1: managers also resented Glenn. They thought he was too much

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Speaker 1: of a showboat. They felt that he needed to be

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Speaker 1: kind of put in his place, and so they kept

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Speaker 1: him out of the rotation, and they essentially gave him

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Speaker 1: the runaround for a couple of years, not telling him

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Speaker 1: that he wouldn't fly, but never allowing him to fly again.

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Speaker 1: And finally Glenn, by sixty four, had gotten the message

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Speaker 1: it wasn't going to happen, and he dropped out of

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Speaker 1: the program and began his career in politics. I did

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Speaker 1: going into the Space Shuttle, and at the age of

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Speaker 1: seventy seven, happened for him well. Glenn, at that point

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Speaker 1: in the late nineties, was nearing the end of his

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Speaker 1: fourth term as a Senator from Ohio and he was

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Speaker 1: going to retire. He was seventy seven years old in

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight and he was doing some research on

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Speaker 1: the effects of aging. This was an issue that he

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Speaker 1: worked on as a senator, and he began to think, well, look,

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Speaker 1: they've got all of this data on me in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty two, when I was forty forty one years old.

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Speaker 1: I wonder what would happen if I went into space.

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Speaker 1: Today they could do a longitudinal study and compare me

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Speaker 1: at age seventy seven with me at age forty. And

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Speaker 1: of course this was not a purely scientific inquiry. Glenn

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Speaker 1: was desperate to get back into space, in part for

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Speaker 1: the reason that I mentioned a minute ago, that he

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Speaker 1: had gotten boxed out of the program back in the sixties,

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Speaker 1: and so he made his case to Dan Golden, who

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Speaker 1: was the administrator of NASA at the time. It took

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Speaker 1: some time he sold Golden on the idea. They took

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Speaker 1: it to President Clinton, who approved it. Glenn passed every

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Speaker 1: physical test that the younger astronauts passed. I was a

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Speaker 1: prerequisite of this being able to work, and in October

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Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety eight he went back into space. That's remarkable,

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Speaker 1: just remarkable. Now, he was never part of Apollo because

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Speaker 1: he had resigned before that, didn't he That's right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it was the writing was on the wall. He could

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Speaker 1: finally see it that he was not going to get

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Speaker 1: a chance to go to the Moon, and they were

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Speaker 1: kind of nudging him to take a desk job at

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Speaker 1: NASA and then move into the administration of NASA. That

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Speaker 1: wasn't what he wanted to do. He wanted to fly,

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Speaker 1: and it was just too painful for him to stick

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Speaker 1: around at a desk job, so he decided that he

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Speaker 1: needed to just move to another realm altogether. He'd always

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Speaker 1: been interested in politics. President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy had

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Speaker 1: encouraged him to run for Senate, and he felt that

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Speaker 1: it was finally time. We're coming up on fifty two

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Speaker 1: years since we were last on the moon, first on

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Speaker 1: the moon, but Russia still hasn't done anything. Still, well,

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Speaker 1: China is more likely to get there soon than Russia

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Speaker 1: at this point, and maybe even US. We're going to

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Speaker 1: get talking about going back. And Russia, for all of

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Speaker 1: its continued activity and space, does not seem to be

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Speaker 1: what his focused on the Moon, says the US or China.

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Speaker 1: I mean, China is building space stations, going to Mars

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Speaker 1: with the rovers, and they're all over the place, aren't they.

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Speaker 1: They've got three Chinese astronauts on their way up right

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Speaker 1: now to their space station. It's it's the first astronauts

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Speaker 1: from China going up, I believe in five years. Why

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Speaker 1: aren't they working with the Federation. Well, China has generally

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Speaker 1: taken and go it alone approach in space, and I

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Speaker 1: think that. In fact, one of the leaders of their

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Speaker 1: space program made it plain today. Um, and this actually,

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Speaker 1: I think very much recalls the history that we're talking about.

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Speaker 1: He said that a nation that is showing it's it's

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Speaker 1: prowess in space is clearly a nation with great an

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Speaker 1: advanced technology here on Earth that they that space is

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Speaker 1: a projection of power on Earth. It is a very

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Speaker 1: powerful symbol today, just as it was in the early sixties.

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Speaker 1: Did Kenn did he know John Glenn? Well, he did

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Speaker 1: know Glenn Well, you know, he saw something in Glenn

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Speaker 1: that he didn't see in the other astronauts. He saw

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Speaker 1: that political ability, that political instinct, and that leadership quality.

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Speaker 1: You know, Alan Shepard was a phenomenal pilot and was

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Speaker 1: chosen first, as you mentioned, But Shepard was never interested

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Speaker 1: in the leader of the group. Shepard was interested in

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Speaker 1: being the winner. He wanted to go first. Now, of

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Speaker 1: course they all did, but Glenn had always been a leader,

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Speaker 1: and that was the role that Glenn saw for himself.

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Speaker 1: And so he also had a very strong an impulse

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Speaker 1: toward public service, and he felt that he was serving

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Speaker 1: his country of course as a marine pilot and then

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Speaker 1: later as an astronaut, that he was advancing US interests

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Speaker 1: around the world by being an astronaut, and so it

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Speaker 1: was natural from Glen's view that he would try to

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Speaker 1: do that in political office. When Kennedy made his famous speech,

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Speaker 1: we choose to go to the Moon, he really captured

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Speaker 1: the nation, didn't he He did. And you know what's

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Speaker 1: interesting about that speech. So that was the speech that

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Speaker 1: he gave at Rice University in September of nineteen sixty two.

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Speaker 1: You would have loved to have written that one. Huh. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's one for the ages. That's that's truly one of

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Speaker 1: the great speeches ever made by a president. And what's

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Speaker 1: interesting about that is how different it is from the

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Speaker 1: previous speech that he made in part about the moon,

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Speaker 1: when he announced the goal that the United States would

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Speaker 1: send men to the Moon by the end of the decade.

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Speaker 1: That was back in May of nineteen sixty one, just

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Speaker 1: after Alan Shepherd had gone up. And that's a very

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Speaker 1: bold statement. But if you if you watch the rest

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Speaker 1: of that speech, and I encourage people to pull it

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Speaker 1: up on YouTube, you can watch the whole speech. He

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Speaker 1: goes off script after he says that, and he begins

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Speaker 1: to get a little awkward and uncomfortable, which is not

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Speaker 1: how you usually see John Kennedy. And he starts to

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Speaker 1: show shuffle the pages on the podium and like he's lost,

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Speaker 1: like he's lost in a speech or something. He is,

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Speaker 1: and and what he goes on to say extemporaneously is

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Speaker 1: this is going to be really hard, and this is

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Speaker 1: going to be really expensive, and you, the Congress, and

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Speaker 1: you the American people need to think really hard about

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Speaker 1: whether we're going to do this, because the worst thing

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Speaker 1: would be if we were to commit to this and

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Speaker 1: then at some point along the path to the moon

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Speaker 1: we just we give up and we decided it's not

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Speaker 1: worth the effort. That would be worse than not going

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Speaker 1: at all. And he got in the presidential limo to

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Speaker 1: head back to the White House afterwards, and he turned

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Speaker 1: to his speechwriter Ted Starnson, and he said, essentially, I

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Speaker 1: don't think they were buying it. He was reading the audience,

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Speaker 1: the body language of the members of Congress, and he

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Speaker 1: felt like they're not buying it. No commitments, that's right.

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Speaker 1: And they gave him the money that he asked for

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Speaker 1: because it was seen as a national security investment, but

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Speaker 1: they were not sold on the notion that the United

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Speaker 1: States either needed to go to the Moon or that

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Speaker 1: it could go to the moon. Those are amazing times

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Speaker 1: I remember them, and they were they were just ratleed

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Speaker 1: the country together. Well, it did become a unifying goal,

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Speaker 1: and I think that by the time of that speech

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Speaker 1: that you mentioned that speech at Rice Kennedy has really

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Speaker 1: decided that he is all in. I mean, he had

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Speaker 1: announced the goal, but now this was that that second

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Speaker 1: speech was after John glenn had gone up and orbited

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Speaker 1: the Earth, after Scott Carpenter had done the same thing.

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Speaker 1: There was some momentum in the program, and Kennedy really

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Speaker 1: was trying to make sure that that momentum got locked in.

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Speaker 1: There was always the danger that Congress was going to

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Speaker 1: lose interest in the program, that it was going to

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Speaker 1: cut funding, and it was often threatening to do that,

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Speaker 1: and so Kennedy was trying to keep the energy up

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Speaker 1: and keep the sense of optimism up that we really

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Speaker 1: could do this, and that we really had to do this.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast Coast Am every weeknight at one

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Speaker 1: a m. Eastern, and go to Coast to coast am

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Speaker 1: dot com for more