Glenn's flight, plus 50

Fifth years ago Monday, Ohioan John Glenn became America’s first astronaut to orbit the Earth. As much as anyone else, Mr. Glenn inspired this nation to reach for the stars.

Mr. Glenn combined boyish, small-town charm with nerves of steel. After his days in the space program, he was a four-term U.S. senator and lent his name to Ohio’s NASA Glenn Research Center and Ohio State University’s John Glenn School of Public Affairs.

Perhaps his greatest achievement was his ability to get Americans to dream big, to look beyond their fears of the Cold War. Mr. Glenn took four hours and 56 minutes to orbit Earth in NASA’s tiny Mercury Friendship 7 space capsule, a death-defying feat at the speed of 17,000 miles an hour.

Two other Americans, Alan Shepard, Jr. and Gus Grissom, preceded Mr. Glenn into space but didn’t circle the globe. Mr. Glenn’s flight enabled the United States to reassert itself as a world leader in science and technology, after the Soviet Union beat America into outer space with the launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite in October, 1957, as well as the first two manned Earth orbits.

Mr. Glenn’s feat again heartened a dejected America when The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe’s classic book about the nation’s original astronauts, came out in 1979. The country had reeled from President Richard Nixon’s resignation, the chaotic withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, and most recently the Iran hostage crisis.

At age 90, Mr. Glenn remains humble about his feat. He persuasively argues that space needs further U.S. exploration. He is a symbol of something bigger, a reason for Ohioans and other Americans to reach for the stars in all facets of life.