Selection
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. This damaged American confidence in its technological superiority, creating a wave of anxiety known as the Sputnik crisis. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower launched the Space Race. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established on October 1, 1958, as a civilian agency to develop space technology. One of its first initiatives was announced on December 17, 1958. This was Project Mercury, which aimed to launch a man into Earth orbit, return him safely to the Earth, and evaluate his capabilities in space.
His Bureau of Aeronautics job gave Glenn access to new spaceflight news, such as the X-15 rocket plane. While on duty at Patuxent and in Washington, Glenn read everything he could find about space. His office was asked to send a test pilot to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to make runs on a spaceflight simulator, as part of research by the newly formed NASA into re-entry vehicle shapes. The pilot would also be sent to the Naval Air Development Center in Johnsville, Pennsylvania, and would be subjected to high G-forces in a centrifuge for comparison with data collected in the simulator. His request for the position was granted, and he spent several days at Langley and a week in Johnsville for the testing. As one of the very few pilots to have done such testing, Glenn had become an expert on the subject. NASA asked military-service members to participate in planning the mockup of a spacecraft. Having participated in the research at Langley and Johnsville, he was sent to the McDonnell plant in St. Louis as a service adviser to NASA's spacecraft mockup board. Envisioning himself in the vehicle, Glenn stated that the passenger would have to be able to control the spacecraft. McDonnell engineers told him of the importance of lightening the vehicle as much as possible, so Glenn began exercising to lose the 30 pounds (14 kg) by which he estimated he was overweight.
Eisenhower directed NASA to recruit its first astronauts from military test pilots. Of 508 graduates of test pilot schools, 110 matched the minimum standards. Marine Corps pilots were mistakenly omitted at first; two were quickly found, including Glenn. The candidates had to be younger than 40, possess a bachelor's degree or equivalent, and be 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) or less. Only the height requirement was strictly enforced, owing to the size of the Project Mercury spacecraft. This was fortunate for Glenn, who barely met the requirements, as he was near the age cutoff and lacked a science-based degree, but had taken more classes since leaving college than needed for graduation. Glenn was otherwise so outstanding a candidate that Colonel Jake Dill, his commanding officer at test pilot school, visited NASA headquarters to insist that Glenn would be the perfect astronaut.
For an interview with Charles Donlan, associate director of Project Mercury, Glenn brought the results from the centrifuge to show that he had done well on a test that perhaps no other candidate had taken. Donlan also noticed that Glenn stayed late at night to study schematics of the Mercury spacecraft. He was among the 32 of the first 69 candidates that passed the first step of the evaluation and were interested in continuing, sufficient for the astronaut corps NASA wanted. On February 27 a grueling series of physical and psychological tests began at the Lovelace Clinic and the Wright Aerospace Medical Laboratory.
Because of his Bureau of Aeronautics job, Glenn was already participating in Project Mercury; while other candidates were at Wright, on March 17 he and most of those who would choose the astronauts visited the McDonnell plant building the spacecraft to inspect its progress and make changes. While Glenn had not scored the highest on all the tests, a member of the selection committee recalled how he had impressed everyone with his "strength of personality and his dedication". On April 6 Donlan called Glenn to offer him a position at Project Mercury, one of seven candidates chosen as astronauts. Glenn was pleased while Annie was supportive but wary of the danger; during his three years at Patuxent, 12 test pilots had died.
The identities of the seven were announced at a press conference at Dolley Madison House in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 1959: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton. In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe wrote that Glenn "came out of it as tops among seven very fair-haired boys. He had the hottest record as a pilot, he was the most quotable, the most photogenic, and the lone Marine." The magnitude of the challenge ahead of them was made clear a few weeks later, on the night of May 18, 1959, when the seven astronauts gathered at Cape Canaveral to watch their first rocket launch, of an SM-65D Atlas, which was similar to the one that was to carry them into orbit. A few minutes after liftoff, it exploded spectacularly, lighting up the night sky. The astronauts were stunned. Shepard turned to Glenn and said: "Well, I'm glad they got that out of the way."
Glenn remained an officer in the Marine Corps after his selection, and was assigned to the NASA Space Task Group at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The task force moved to Houston, Texas, in 1962, and became part of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center. A portion of the astronauts' training was in the classroom, where they learned space science. The group also received hands-on training, which included scuba diving and work in simulators. Astronauts secured an additional role in the spaceflight program: to provide pilot input in design. The astronauts divided the various tasks between them. Glenn's specialization was cockpit layout design and control functioning for the Mercury and early Apollo programs. He pressed the other astronauts to set a moral example, living up to the squeaky-clean image of them that had been portrayed by Life magazine, a position that was not popular with the other astronauts.
