CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Their hair is grayer and thinner, their stride less energetic, but four of the nation's pioneer astronauts drew as much applause and accord Sunday as they did on Feb. 20, 1962, when John Glenn became the first American to reach orbit.
"It seems like 40 days more than 40 years," Glenn said. "The memories are so vivid."
Gathered on a stage at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, in front of an Atlas rocket like the ones they rode, the astronauts smiled as a crowd of thousands cheered and reached for autographs. The scene was similar to the unabashed admiration they received during the early days of the space race.
For their part, Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra and Gordon Cooper recalled the competition with the Soviet Union and the problems with early rockets.
"I went up on the roof to watch (an Atlas launch) and it got up about 200 feet and it blew," Schirra said. "That got my attention."
Glenn, who flew again aboard shuttle Discovery in 1998, remembered a small eye chart taped to his Mercury console. Researchers expected his eyes to swell in microgravity and his vision to blur.
"I was supposed to look at that (chart), and if the letters got blurry, I was to do an emergency re-entry," he said. "We all laugh at that now, but it was a real concern." The men also remembered their three fellow astronauts who did not live to see Sunday's celebration: Alan Shepard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Deke Slayton.
Content with their places in history, the surviving astronauts voiced a little frustration about NASA's current direction.
Glenn, a former U.S. Senator from Ohio, said the lack of competition makes the nation's space program less urgent to Americans.
"We had an impetus in those days that we don't have now," he said. "The main thing now is to concentrate on the International Space Station where we can do better research that will benefit people on Earth."
Schirra said the International Space Station, hampered by cost overruns, should be completed as planned with a full complement of researchers, rather than the smaller three-member crew now planned.
"Until we get a commitment from NASA and its budgeting (to enlarge the crew), the International Space Station is not doing its job," he said.
Carpenter advised citizens to become advocates for NASA instead of letting the agency drift.
"NASA takes some heat and that's unjustified," he said. "NASA doesn't decide what to do -- people of this nation decide what to do."
The men, all of whom went through prolonged, strenuous and invasive medical tests before they were chosen, shared mixed opinions on space tourists. They said there's little comparison between what they went through to get to space and what a tourist needs to make the same trip.
Glenn compared using the station as a tourist stop to using a wing of a hospital for a hot dog stand. "I wish everyone here could go up, you'd love it," he said. "But I don't think we should be encouraging that."
Glenn advocates sending scientists to the station that can exploit research in microgravity.
"John is not in synch," Schirra joked, alluding to pop star Lance Bass of the band 'N Sync. Bass hopes to ride a Russian rocket to the station in November.
However, private money may be the best way to recharge a space race, Cooper said.
"Airplanes were not developed by the government, it was developed by money put up by private citizens to win prizes, maybe we need something along the same lines in space," he said.
The astronauts began putting their own money up in 1986 when they formed the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. The fund, which raises money from events such as a Sunday dinner with the astronauts, has given 187 scholarships worth $1.5 million since it began.
Published under license from FLORIDA TODAY. Copyright © 2002 FLORIDA TODAY. No portion of this material may be reproduced in any way without the written consent of FLORIDA TODAY.
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