Taking a Stroll in Space

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"I'm coming back in ... and it's the saddest moment of my life."

Edward H. White
June 3, 1965

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Fifty years ago, an American walked in space for the first time.

The man who took the first walk in space was not an American but a Russian. It was during the heated days of the U.S.–U.S.S.R. space race, and every first in the race to the moon was treated like something truly special, even if it wasn't.

Well, maybe it was special at the time, but not so much later on.

On this day in 1965, Edward White became the first American to walk in space. He wasn't one of the original "Mercury 7" astronauts. He was part of the second group chosen — along with Neil Armstrong, who would become the first man to walk on the moon, and Jim Lovell, who flew to the moon twice but never landed there.

White was the pilot of Gemini 4, the second manned space flight in NASA's Project Gemini. James McDivitt was the command pilot. White spent about 20 minutes outside the space ship, then reluctantly returned.

It was — without question — the highlight of the mission. Most people don't know that another first was planned on that mission, but it didn't work out nearly as well. McDivitt was slated to attempt a space rendezvous — an orbital maneuver that became almost routine in later missions but failed on this occasion. McDivitt made up for it a few years later as commander of Apollo 9, which was the first manned flight test of the lunar module.

(And he was Apollo spacecraft program manager from 1969 to 1972, the period in which all of NASA's missions to the moon — so far — were launched.)

The lunar module was the vehicle that carried astronauts to the surface of the moon. It was necessary for the command module to perform a space rendezvous with the lunar module before that part of the mission could commence.

So it is safe to say that McDivitt secured a better spot for himself in NASA's history later in his career than he did 50 years ago.

White, too, is remembered for something other than his space walk on Gemini 4 — something that was probably more important to the success of the program in the long run but hardly as personally triumphant. On Jan. 27, 1967, while conducting spacecraft practice, White and two other astronauts perished when a fire broke out in the pure oxygen environment of the cabin.

The astronauts' deaths revealed spacecraft flaws that NASA resolved before resuming the Apollo program, which went on to put 12 men on the moon and return them safely to earth.

Ride, Sally Ride

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Nearly a year ago, Sally Ride, America's first female astronaut, died of cancer at the age of 61.

It's a shame she couldn't have lived another year because today is the 30th anniversary of her historic trip into outer space, and it would be fascinating to get her perspective on how things in general have changed for women in the last three decades.

Things have changed for both genders in terms of space travel; actually, things have changed quite a bit for the space program in general. The United States put the space shuttle in mothballs a couple of years ago. Once in awhile, there is talk of reviving the programs of traveling to the moon or just into space — or beginning work on the much more ambitious goal of traveling to Mars — but little has come of such talk.

And, in spite of some protests to the contrary, it is plausible to argue — in some quarters — that little has changed for women since that time.

I guess it depends on what one considers progress and how long one thinks it is reasonable to wait for it.

A woman had already been appointed to the Supreme Court by the time of Ride's historic journey into space. No women had been nominated prior to that; three more have been appointed and currently sit on the Court today.

Since this day 30 years ago, both major political parties have put women on their national tickets — the Democrats were first a year after Ride's flight, it took the Republicans two dozen years to do the same.

There are arguments to be made about how women are portrayed in the popular media, whether they are given more or less respect as a demographic group. And there are certainly arguments to be made about inequities in pay — although, in the economy we've had for the last 5½ years, it may be more relevant to compare unemployment and underemployment rates for the sexes.

But I wonder if it is appropriate even to discuss those things on this day. Ride's achievement was her own. It was never suggested, never even implied, that her accomplishment would change the lives of American women.

It may have opened some doors in the space program for women, but it certainly wasn't why Geraldine Ferraro or Sarah Palin were chosen to run for vice president — and Sandra Day O'Connor had been on the Supreme Court for nearly two years when Ride went into space so it makes no sense to say that Sally Ride influenced Supreme Court nominations.

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It was part of the steady drip–drip–drip of history that signals an inevitability of some kind.

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was like that. It didn't cause immediate change, but, little by little, attitudes were changed and barriers were torn down.

That is often how history works. Change rarely comes as quickly as some people want, but eventually it comes.

Sally Ride made her contribution to the evolution of women's role in our culture 30 years ago.

But she was a very private woman. Few people knew of her long–term same–sex relationship or of her eventually fatal illness until after she died.

I don't feel she was motivated by a desire to be a role model at anything other than being a good and dedicated astronaut — which she was.

Godspeed, John Glenn

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Fifty years ago, writes John Noble Wilford in the New York Times, America "needed a hero."

I suppose the same could said of many times in America's history, but, as Wilford observes, "Americans had yet to recover from the Soviet Union's launching of the first spacecraft, Sputnik, in October 1957 — a rude jolt to our confidence as world leaders in all things technological."

In hindsight, it's probably as remarkable that the United States beat the Soviet Union to the moon as it was that Americans got there at all. In 1962, as Wilford points out, American confidence had taken a considerable bashing. When John F. Kennedy challenged America to commit to landing on the moon before the end of the 1960s, the nation really had little reason to believe it could.

But then, writes Wilford, "a Marine Corps fighter pilot from small–town America stepped forward in response to the country's need. The astronaut was John Glenn, whom the author Tom Wolfe has called 'the last true national hero America has ever had.' "

Glenn was made to order for the role of national hero — but he knew he didn't do it alone. On Saturday, he told the surviving members of Project Mercury, at an event commemorating Glenn's historic flight, that they were "the people who made it work."

That was true enough, but it was Glenn who put his life on the line.

His flight 50 years ago today lasted less than five hours, but he made history as surely as Neil Armstrong did seven years later when he walked on the moon. And he displayed a boyish wonder as he experienced things no American had ever experienced before.

He was the first American to orbit the earth, and he did so three times that day, observing at one point, after witnessing sunrise from orbit, "That sure was a short day. That was about the shortest day I've ever run into."

As the sun rose, Glenn observed what he described as "fireflies" outside the capsule. Neither he nor the people at NASA knew what he was seeing — it was later determined that they were ice crystals venting from the spacecraft — but Glenn simply could not contain his amazement.

"I am in a big mass of some very small particles," he said. "They're brilliantly lit up like they're luminescent. I never saw anything like it. They round a little: they're coming by the capsule and they look like little stars. A whole shower of them coming by. They swirl around the capsule and go in front of the window and they're all brilliantly lighted."

The scene was beautifully re–created in the 1983 film "The Right Stuff."

It was in the book "The Right Stuff" that Wolfe called Glenn the last American hero. In truth, though — and, perhaps, inevitably — what Glenn did 50 years ago today was his heroic peak. The rest of his public career had its ups and downs.

Glenn was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974, beating the incumbent for the Democratic nomination after giving his "Gold Star Mothers" speech in response to his opponent's charge that he "never worked for a living."

"[L]ook those men with mangled bodies in the eyes and tell them they didn't hold a job," Glenn said, speaking of his comrades in the military. "You go with me to any Gold Star mother and you look her in the eye and tell her that her son did not hold a job."

Glenn might have been vice president. His name was mentioned among the leading contenders for the second spot on Jimmy Carter's ticket in 1976, but his keynote address to the Democratic convention was unimpressive, and Carter chose Walter Mondale instead.

In 1983, there was considerable talk about Glenn as a possible challenger to President Reagan, but Glenn and his staff were worried, as it turned out, about the release of the film version of Wolfe's book late that year. Wolfe had written in glowing terms about Glenn as a hero, but Glenn's staffers felt Wolfe portrayed Glenn as a zealot, and there was anxiety about how a movie that reinforced that image might be received.

As it turned out, reviewers saw the portrayal of Glenn as heroic, and Glenn tried to capitalize on the favorable publicity, but once again, he lost to Mondale — who went on to lose a 49–state landslide to Reagan.

A few years later, Glenn was one of the "Keating five," a group of senators who became ensnared in the savings and loan scandal of the late 1980s, but he was cleared by the Senate commission that investigated. Instead, he was found to be guilty of "poor judgment."

His judgment may have been questioned, but he always seemed to retain the image of hero.

I remember having a G.I. Joe, like many boys my age, and one year I received a space–age accessory on my birthday to go with it. It was a one–man space capsule for the G.I. Joe that was apparently modeled after Glenn's Friendship 7.

I don't recall any identifiable marks on the capsule, but I do remember that the capsule came with a recording, about three or four minutes long, of dialogue from Glenn's space shot — including the "Godspeed, John Glenn" wish for good luck from Mission Control as liftoff began.

I suppose the idea was for children to listen to the record while they played with the space capsule. In that way, they could simulate things they saw on television. Well, that's what I did, anyway. In the make–believe world of my bedroom, my G.I. Joe was a space traveler, and the capsule was his vehicle for trips to strange new worlds.

Space travel certainly was heroic in those days. It may seem terribly routine to folks in the 21st century, but there was nothing routine about it in 1962.

It was the dawning of the age of the Space Race in the United States.

Now 90, Glenn told Todd Halvorson of Florida Today that space travel isn't just about going places but doing things once you get there.

"[I]t's not only seeing how far we go into space, and eventually being on Mars, and maybe sometime having a base on the moon," he said. "But to me, of equal importance is to maximize the research return."

America got a lot of return on its investment on this day in 1962.