Space Oddity
Down-to-earth musings on John Glenn's proposed return to space
In a few weeks time, barring bad
weather, a coup d'état
stemming from Monica Lewinsky's
manifest failure to inhale, or
(most likely) death from natural
causes, the American public will
be punished with the most-hyped
intergalactic voyage since Josie
and the Pussycats blasted off
for outer space 20 years ago.
Alas, this shameless ratings
ploy won't involve a bunch of
shapely proto-riot grrls hitting
their asses with tambourines
while foiling the dark designs
of overreaching
extraterrestrials—the space
oddity this time around will be
saggy-skinned politician John
Glenn, who back in 1962 became
the first American to orbit the
globe. On October 29, the very
senior senator from Ohio will be
helped into the space shuttle
Discovery where he will spend up
to 10 days undergoing
experiments on the effects of
space on the elderly. At the
very least, scientists hope to
settle once and for all whether
it's possible for a 77-year-old
man to fall and not get up in a
zero-gravity environment.
As is usually the case with such
tax-funded spectacles, official
explanations are at best
incomplete, at worst insulting.
Despite NASA's protestations,
the inclusion of a man dubbed
Ol' Magnet Ass by fellow pilots
way back during the Korean War
(the early-'50s conflict now
best remembered for indirectly
providing Alan Alda with a
carefree retirement) merely
underscores the fact that of all
the losers in the Cold War, no
combatant took it on the chin
harder than the agency responsible
for Tang's market share,
Challenger explosion jokes, and
the backdrop I Dream of Jeannie.
Back in the good old days when
the Russkies threatened to turn
the moon into a literal Soviet
satellite republic and even a
dumb monkey like Curious George
was willing to risk his life for
god and country, selling space
missions to the public didn't
require much work. All boosters
had to do was shrug, mumble a
few words about the Bolshoi
Ballet tap dancing down
Pennsylvania Avenue, and back up
the Brinks truck to the Capitol.
However, in the brand-spankin'
new, post-Cold War One-World
Order—you know, the shockingly
different place in which
Protestants and Catholics shoot
each other in Northern Ireland,
Palestinians and Jews slug it
out on the West Bank, and
Aerosmith gets more than its
fair share of airplay—newer,
more relevant gimmicks are
needed to keep NASA's budget
anywhere near the upper
atmosphere (who can forget the
strategically timed "discovery"
of "possible" Martian life forms
a couple of years ago?). What
better scam to foist on the
emerging Geritol Nation that is
America than to send an old man
into outer space? And if you
can't get the late George Burns
– and who can these days?—why
not go with a crepuscular former-
astronaut-cum-politician who is
perhaps best known for being a
Of course, when NASA announced
Glenn's participation earlier
this year, officials were as
quick to deny his selection had
anything to do with PR value
as they were to concede that –
good morning starshine! –
shooting a soon-to-be-retired
senator into the Final Frontier
had a helluva lot of PR value.
As one agency puppet put it, "To
see [this] level of interest you
would have to go back to the
Apollo program." Indeed, not for
nothing is Glenn's official role
on the mission that of "payload
specialist." Ash to ashes, funk
to funky—we know Major John's
a flunky.
If any of this sounds familiar,
it is: Glenn's selection seems
eerily inspired by the "Deep
Space Homer" episode of The
Simpsons, in which NASA
officials try to counter weak
shuttle-launch ratings by
including an "average man" –
ultimately Homer J. himself—in
the space program. Perhaps the
only thing more disturbing than
the idea that space policy is
now being set by the network
responsible for such
small-screen supernovas as
Woops! (a post-apocalyptic
version of Gilligan's Island),
Babes (three obese sisters
tryin' to make it in a thin
girls' world), and Good Grief!
(Howie Mandel as a very zany
mortician) is the fact that an
obeisant press corps seems more
fully on board than Dr. Smith
ever did in Lost In Space.
"Are we going to cover this more
than a normal old mundane
shuttle flight? You bet…. As a
human interest story, the idea
of a man that old wanting to go
back into space and doing it is
irresistible," Doyle McManus,
Washington bureau chief for the
Los Angeles Times, told the
Cincinnati Enquirer. "There is a
great deal of interest in the
story—one, the senator's age,
the fact that he is a senator,
[and] the fact that he is a
former astronaut," sputtered ABC
News automaton Arnot Walker.
Say, did we forget to mention
that our retro Rocket Man is an
old, male senator who was once
an astronaut? Here's another
irresistible potential angle:
Did you know that Mars ain't the
kind of place to raise the kids?
In fact, it's cold as hell—and
there's no one there to raise
them, if you did.
Curiously—and hearteningly –
enough, NASA's ploy is showing
signs of fizzling on the launch
pad like, well, one of NASA's
own launches. In a fitting
development for a pseudo-event
that will take place in a
vacuum, the agency's antics have
ignited an equal-and-opposite
reaction from the great boob
public. To the extent anyone
actually cares, it has inspired
instead mostly comic and cynical
reactions, such as a widely
circulated samizdat Top 10 list
of changes at NASA to
accommodate John Glenn (Cargo
bay now converted into
shuffleboard court … little
bowls of candy scattered around
ship … space pants now go up
to armpits). In fact, even the
press has shown some healthy
hostility at being cast as the
dutiful, stay-at-home wife
fretting over our hero's trip to
the stars. In Glenn's home
state, a Cincinnati Enquirer
editorial mused whether his
ticket to ride was a
"presidential payoff for
partisan service in helping to
bury the Senate investigation
into Clinton-Gore campaign
finance violations," before
suggesting that the millionaire
senator should first settle a
very Earth-based matter: the $3
million debt left over from the
wreck that was his 1984 run at
the presidency.
Perhaps more to the point, other
events of the moment are
lighting up the sky so brightly
that Glenn's Tom Swift Sr. show
has been demoted to the Comet
Kohoutek-level diversion that it
is, a fact that clearly pains a
man well past the point of
caring about blow jobs and the
use of cigars as sexual aids.
When asked by Life magazine why
his excellent adventure has been
pushed off the front page and
back to the classified section,
where it battles Love Is …
for eyeballs, Glenn
sagely hypothesized, "It's
because I don't do drugs and I
don't rape women between
flights. That's what the media
feeds on today." Which suggests
one more test NASA may want to
conduct on Shuttle Mission
STS-95: an experiment to
ascertain, if it's true that in
space no one can hear you
scream, whether it's possible to
drown out an old man complaining
about how much worse the world
is these days.
Nick Gillespie is editor-in-chief of reason. This story originally appeared in Suck, and can be viewed in that format here.
