Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: December 11, 2016

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ASTRONAUT JOHN GLENN DIES

by Hazed

Astronaut John Glenn has died aged 95. He was the first American to orbit the Earth, and later became the oldest person to travel into orbit.

His three orbits around the Earth in the Mercury spacecraft Friendship 7, in February 1962, lasted four hours. The mission restored America’s place in the space race after the Russians had beaten them in getting a man into space. His first words after his return were, “It’s hot in there.”

This flight was very risky – there was a lot that could have gone wrong (see the second link below).

After this historic mission he wasn’t allowed to return to space so he became a politician, winning a senate seat for Ohio.

In 1998 when he was 77 he became the oldest man to travel into space, as part of the crew of the Discovery space shuttle. He spent 218 hours orbiting Earth, during which time he undertook experiments to examine the effect of space travel on his aging body. The data from this mission was compared with that collected on his first flight, 36 years before.

Both of his missions served to fire up the public imagination about America’s space programme.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13561650
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=36754

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