John Glenn certainly had what Wolfe he said he did: The Right Stuff.

Glenn had the Right Stuff to be president too, if that dream didn't happen for him. 

President's come and go; only one American gets to be first in space.

Godspeed indeed for the generation of John Glenn as it ages now too.

Its hard to believe that its been fifty years now since Glenn's co-pilot on the ground Scott Carpenter said those famous words as Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth: "Godspeed John Glenn."

Godspeed indeed for all those who leave the bounds of the Earth for the heavens, clearly mankind's final frontier as Rodenberry said.

Fifty years ago today with John Glenn's flight, we began to close the gap in space with the USSR.

Yuri Gagarin had gone first into orbit, which along with Sputnik and Laika the Space Dog, gave America a bit of an inferiority complex, until John Glenn's flight altered that.

Although I wasn't a gleam in anyone's eye when John Glenn left on his tiny Mercury spacecraft, Godspeed John Glenn indeed, I remember very well watching Glenn's flight on the shuttle forty five or so years later with Megan, Eric, and Barry, and how moving it was to hear Carpenter repeat those same words, if in a voice with the emotional quaver common to seventy years and up males with a life of accomplishment they feel slowly ebbing.

Godspeed indeed John Glenn, and Godspeed indeed to something that's hard to believe, but inspiring too: the next half century of human beings leaving the Earth and traveling into space.

finis