Page 4 - Demo

A charismatic animal, he entered space on January 31, 1961 in a Mercury capsule, and remained weightless for 16 minutes and 39 seconds. Several months later, he was followed by Enos, who completed an entire orbit. A very ornery chimp, he was know as Enos the Penis because he was obstinate and often tried to bite his handlers. Both Ham and Enos landed safely.The Soviet Union scored a stunning coup on April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to enter outer space. His Swallow Vostok 1 spacecraft made one complete orbit before returning to Earth. A month latter, the U.S. launched Alan Shepard into a suborbital flight aboard Freedom 7. Then two months later, Gus Grissom made another short flight in his Liberty Bell 7. While impressive, these were minor feats compared to what Gherman Titov accomplished in August of 1961, when he spent 25 hours during 17 orbits around the earth. Less than a week afterwards, the Russians launched two spacecraft within a day of each other. They maneuvered in orbit and were able to pull within a few miles of each other.Again, most Americans felt the United States%u2019 space effort was second-rate compared to the Soviet Union. The popular opinion was that the only way to demonstrate any progress at all, was for NASA to launch a multi-orbital flight of its own. That finally happened on February 20, 1962.The Astronaut chosen for the first U.S. orbital flight was John Glenn, who was originally scheduled to lift off on December 20,1961. But due to technical and weather delays, the launch was postponed until January 16, 1962, then to January 20, then to January 27, then to February 1, then to February 14. Finally on February 20, Glenn climbed into his Friendship 7 capsule%u2014and sat there for 3 hours and 44 minutes while several defective components were repaired. At last, at 9:47 AM Eastern Time, he was launched into orbit around the planet. During liftoff, he experienced almost eight times the force of gravity. An estimated onehundred-thousand spectators were on hand near Cape Canaveral to watch Glenn%u2019s Atlas LV-3B missile take off, while millions more saw it on television.After separating from its rocket, Glenn%u2019s Mercury capsule entered an elliptical orbit around Earth, and he radioed to Mission Control, %u201cCapsule is turning around. Oh, that view is tremendous.%u201d During his first orbit, Glenn noticed what looked like small, glowing fireflies drifting past the capsule%u2019s window. On a later Mercury flight, they