CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Pioneering U.S. rocket rider John Glenn chatted with the International Space Station crew Wednesday, saying the advances the human race has made in orbit during the past 40 years astound him.
Four decades after Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth in a cramped Mercury capsule, NASA astronauts Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch spent the day spacewalking outside a 17-story station.
Checking the statistics, Glenn noted that the his Friendship 7 capsule had about 50 cubic feet (1.4 cubic meters) of space -- or about as much room as the trunk of a large luxury car.
NASA space shuttle orbiters, he noted, sport a relatively expansive 2,600 cubic feet (73 cubic meters) -- or about as much room as a trailer-sized camper.
And the station itself eventually will have pressurized volume of about 15,000 cubic feet (425 cubic meters) -- or about the same amount of space as two 747 jumbo jets.
"So I'm feeling pretty tiny and inconsequential compared to you guys," Glenn told the astronauts and their cosmonaut colleague -- Yuri Onufrienko -- in a space-to-ground radio link-up.
Jovial and self-effacing as ever, Glenn, now 80, told the station crew that his Mercury capsule was so confined that he couldn't float in weightlessness. In fact, he remained strapped into his couch throughout three laps around the planet.
And when he returned to space at 36 years later, flying aboard shuttle Discovery in 1998 at age 77, Glenn said NASA officials would not let him suit up and head outside on a spacewalk."NASA wouldn't let me do that because they were afraid at my age... I might wander off someplace."
All joking aside, Glenn said he was "amazed" how far the nation's space program has come since his historic mission, a trip that so captured the imagination of the world that the entire city of Perth, Australia, turned on their lights for his passing spacecraft.
"It was rather primitive back in '62, and to think we've come now to this station where we go back and forth and keep the station up there with 16 nations cooperating together," he said.
"The potential for research is mind-boggling up there, and that's what's put this country ahead all this time."
Perhaps fittingly, the sprawling space station was passing over Australia as Glenn and the outpost crew finished up their short, 10-minute chat, which prompted yet another lighthearted joke from the one of America's original rocket jockeys.
Said Glenn: "I'll tell them to turn on the lights at Perth."
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