Obituary: John Glenn died on December 8th

TOO big, too unschooled, too old—only narrowly did John Glenn gain entry to the training programme which made him America’s space hero. To meet NASA’s size requirements, he briskly lost 28lb (nearly 13kg), even putting books on his head to try to squeeze a little off his height.

Nothing could be done about his age (pushing 40), nor his lack of scientific qualifications—he had dropped out of his engineering course in 1941 after learning to fly. But what flying it was: 149 combat missions, first against Japan in the Pacific, then in the Korean war; one of them left more than 200 bullet-holes in his plane’s fuselage. They earned him the nickname “The MiG-mad Marine”, six Distinguished Flying Crosses and 18 clusters on his Air Medal. And he was a celebrity already, having just made America’s first transcontinental supersonic flight, in a record three hours 23 minutes, testing a new fighter aircraft.

His country’s spirits needed lifting in 1959. The Soviet space programme seemed unbeatable. Communist scientists had put the first satellite, dog and man into orbit, while America’s efforts flared and fizzled on the launch pad. Despite the mishaps, there was intense rivalry for the privilege of perching in a flimsy metal capsule on top of 100-plus tonnes of rocket fuel. It was another contest just made for the clean-cut mid-Westerner. His austere approach grated on some colleagues—though Mr Glenn insisted he was not the “pious saint”, nor the other guys the “hellions” depicted in the film version of Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff”.

Gloom and ire alike ended on February 20th 1962. To the words “Godspeed, John Glenn” from Mission Control he and America’s hearts soared to the heavens in the Friendship 7. In the space of four hours and 55 minutes he saw three sunrises, circling the Earth at more than 17,000mph (27,000kph). Puzzlingly, he also saw what looked like fireflies, resting on the window. A malfunction on the spacecraft? A sign of failing eyesight? A celestial mirage, or even (some wondered) a miracle? Later it turned out that they were frozen crystals of condensation, catching the sunlight.

The run-up had been testing, with ten delays stretching over two months. But once in orbit, a more serious worry dawned. Some controls in the capsule had apparently failed, meaning that the astronaut himself would have to work out the angle of his re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere. Worse (but also wrongly) NASA had received a signal suggesting that the capsule’s heat shield had, lethally, broken loose. In the nerve-racking final minutes of the flight, his pulse raced from 87 to 132. The important thing, he mused later, was not fear, but what you can do to control it.

The splashdown proved flawless. At Cape Canaveral he was greeted and decorated on the spot by President John Kennedy. In New York, 4m people turned out for a ticker-tape parade. Mr Glenn ranked with the greatest aviators, the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh, in the American pantheon. A joint session of Congress gave him a standing ovation. He was so popular, the BBC’s Alastair Cooke said only half-jokingly, that he could have “abolished the Constitution and been proclaimed president overnight”.

What on earth did he do?

His success had opened the way for the moon landings, yet his popularity kept him grounded. Without the astronaut’s knowledge, JFK ruled out any more space flights. America’s idol was too precious to lose—and perhaps more useful elsewhere. The Kennedys urged him to enter politics. His early steps were faltering, and a frailer soul might have been daunted by his mentors’ fate; in 1968 it was Mr Glenn who had to tell Bobby Kennedy’s children of their father’s assassination.

But in 1974 he stormed through the Democratic primary in his home state of Ohio after the incumbent senator, a tax-dodging tycoon, implied that the challenger lacked real-world experience. With cosmic scorn, Mr Glenn suggested that his opponent visit a veterans’ hospital and “look those men with mangled bodies in the eyes and tell them they didn’t hold a job”.

In many ways he was a model lawmaker, diligent and moderate. There was just one whiff of scandal in 24 years, when he unwisely associated with Charles Keating, a fraudster in search of a bail-out. He promoted environmentalism, nuclear non-proliferation and (of course) space travel: it wasn’t whether America could afford the programme, but whether it could afford not to. He strongly defended evolution, too. Science and religious belief did not clash: they reinforced each other. He had seen more of God’s creation than most people, he would note.

He was bad at delegating and a dull speaker: his fireside chats would put out the fire, people said unkindly. His sole bid for the Democratic nomination, in 1984, crashed amid humiliation and debts. His legislative achievements were modest.

But in 1998, in his final year in the Senate, he became, aged 77, the oldest person to go into space. In theory, the mission was to study the ageing process. But in truth, most reckoned, it was a favour from his friend President Bill Clinton. Few begrudged him his last hurrah. Not until the age of 90 did he give up flying: old people, he insisted, should not let the calendar dictate their lives.