Fifty years ago Monday, a young Marine Corps fighter pilot shoe-horned himself into a cramped Mercury capsule blasted off from Cape Canaveral aboard an Atlas rocket to become the first American in orbit -- and one of the nation's enduring heroes.
John Glenn went on to a distinguished career in the U.S. Senate before making history again in 1998, blasting off aboard the shuttle Discovery to become, at 77, the oldest human to fly in space.
Now 90, Glenn's memories of his historic Feb. 20, 1962, flight aboard Friendship 7 remain razor sharp, "indelibly" etched in his mind. But 50 years after his pioneering mission, Glenn sees a space program in disarray, the result of tight budgets and a presidential decision to retire the space shuttle before a replacement spacecraft was available to take its place.
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