Godspeed, John Glenn...

I guess for my mother, it was t-minus six months and counting (I was happily gestating in her womb)...

It took chutzpah, moxie for a human being to consciously strap (at that time) himself to a large lit stick of dynamite with no guarantee that the procedure, though thoroughly calculated and considered, would not end in disaster.

So was this Marine Corp pilot, who confidently climbed into a Mercury rocket - Friendship 7, and took the first flight by an American to orbit the Earth.

Mercury - Gemini - Apollo: it would change our world with semiconductor-manufactured spinoff technologies that we now take for granted. It would change our focus, our nerve on what was possible. We would look to the stars and listen for signs of humanity's cousins.

50 years later: Godspeed, John Glenn