I screwed up yesterday (not an unusual occurrence), when I noted that it was the fortieth anniversary of Glenn’s flight. Today is. But I’m sticking to the rest of the story, though some have suggested that it was a little churlish to criticize the Senator on the anniversary of his achievement.

However, it was an achievement, and one of great bravery. Today, Andrew Chaikin has another commemorative article as a follow up to yesterday’s from Leonard David. In it, he describes the hazards of that particular flight, on which all did not go well, and contrasts it with more modern spaceflight in the Shuttle.

In some sense, Glenn’s flight was a mini-version of Apollo XIII, in which we almost lost three astronauts on their way to the Moon. The heat shield of his Mercury capsule came loose, and there was great concern that the capsule (along with him) would not survive the fire of entry after his three orbits. Quick thinking on the ground came up with a potential solution, and it apparently worked, though he might have made it even without the change in procedure–we’ll never know.

Of course, the danger should be put into perspective. As a former Korean combat fighter jockey and Marine test pilot, for whom funerals of comrades were a frequent occurrence, strapping himself into that capsule and riding the column of fire to orbit was probably one of the safest things that he’d done in his career up to that point…