Piss In the Wind

The content below is #173 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

• This week I recommend you watch Mushoku Tensei Jobless Reincarnation
  • It is an anime and I know that’s niche as hell because a lot of people despise anime, but I love it.
  • I don’t like all anime. When I was a kid there was little anime that made it over here to the states so I think the quality of anime series/movies that did find a market in the US was higher than today.
    • Today the streaming services (not to mention the not-so-legal pirate streaming services) are flush with all sorts of titles. Which is good and bad. It means there are so many different kinds of anime stories available, so there is something for everyone, but it also means there is a lot of crap content too.
  • Anyway, I digress. Mushoku Tensei Jobless Reincarnation
  • Here’s the official summary:
    • When a wayward man is reincarnated with the knowledge, experience, and regrets from his previous life, he resolves to become successful in his new body.

• That summary doesn’t really do the story justice LOL
  • The main character is a severely depressed Japanese man who was ruthlessly bullied in school and so he never leaves his home…
  • Until one day he dies and opens his eyes in an entirely new world as a new born… except, he still has all his memories, knowledge, desires, and mental illness from his past life.
  • Because the story starts completely fresh (from birth) I think it uniquely allows the audience to relate to the main character.
  • Season 1 is on Hulu and season 2 is still coming out with episodes. You should check it out.
  • I’ve watched season 1 twice now.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

• Our story this week follows an American hero John Glenn
  • He was an American Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the third American in space, and the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962.
  • John Herschel Glenn Jr. was born July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio. He attended primary and secondary schools in New Concord, Ohio. He received a bachelor of science degree in engineering from Muskingum College in New Concord.
  • Glenn entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in March 1942. He graduated and was commissioned in the Marine Corps in 1943. After advanced training, he joined Marine Fighter Squadron 155 and spent a year flying F-4U fighters in the Marshall Islands. He flew 59 combat missions during World War II.
  • In Korea he flew 63 missions with Marine Fighter Squadron 311. As an exchange pilot with the Air Force Glenn flew 27 missions in the F-86 Sabre. In the last nine days of fighting in Korea, Glenn shot down three MiGs in combat along the Yalu River.
  • In July 1957, while he was project officer of the F-8U Crusader, he set a transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to New York — 3 hours and 23 minutes. It was the first transcontinental flight to average supersonic speed.
    • Glenn accumulated nearly 9,000 hours of flying time, about 3,000 of it in jets.
  • When astronauts were assigned to provide pilot input for the design and development of spacecraft, Glenn specialized in cockpit layout and control functioning, including some of the early designs for the Apollo Project.
  • Glenn was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on six occasions, and holds the Air Medal with 18 Clusters for his service during World War II and Korea. Glenn also received the Navy Unit Commendation for service in Korea, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, the China Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, the Korean Presidential Unit Citation, the Navy’s astronaut Wings, the Marine Corps’ Astronaut Medal, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
• He was the first American to orbit Earth. He also became a U.S. senator. Later, he became the oldest person to fly in space.
  • (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space, had made a single orbit of Earth in 1961.)
  •  No, John Glenn never landed on the moon. BUT He completed the Earth orbit in a Mercury spacecraft he named Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962.
• Glenn resigned as an astronaut on Jan. 16, 1964. He was promoted to colonel in October 1964 and retired from the Marine Corps on Jan. 1, 1965.

• In the wake of Kennedy’s November 1963 assassination, Glenn felt a call to public service. Consequently, he left NASA in 1964 to seek a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio. That time, when he ran for senate, he suffered a fall that made him dizzy and drop out… but he didn’t give up on politics and ran again.
  • He served four terms as a U.S. senator from Ohio from 1974 to 1999
  • He became an executive with Royal Crown International, but took an active part in Ohio politics and environmental protection efforts. He won his Senate seat in 1974, carrying all 88 counties of Ohio. He was re-elected in 1980 with the largest margin in Ohio history.
  • Ohio returned him to the Senate for a third term in 1986, again with a substantial majority. In 1992 he was elected again, becoming the first popularly elected senator from his state to win four consecutive terms.
  • During his last term he was the ranking member of both the Governmental Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Air/Land Forces in the Senate Armed Services Committee. He also served on the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Special Committee on Aging.

• Then, in 1998, he flew into space again at age 77. 
  • His mission of almost nine days on the space shuttle orbiter Discovery, launched Oct. 29, 1998, when he was 77, made him the oldest human to venture into space. On Discovery he participated in a series of tests on the aging process. The aging population was one focus of his work as a U.S. senator.
  • Glenn was described as “humble, funny, and generous” by Trevor Brown, dean of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University, in a statement joined by the Glenn family. “Even after leaving public life, he loved to meet with citizens, school children in particular.  He thrilled to music and had a weakness for chocolate.”  
• Former astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn died Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016, at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. 
  • Glenn will always be remembered as the first American to orbit the Earth during those tentative, challenging, daring days when humans were just beginning to venture beyond the atmosphere that had nurtured them since the species began.

That is the life story of John Glenn the man. and while he IS most known for his “first American to circle the Earch” title… There is a lesser-known story from his space missions that tends to raise a few more eyebrows and turn up a few more smiles.

John Glenn holds a special place in US history. He was part of the Mercury Seven (the first group of American astronauts), and he was the first American to orbit Earth. On February 20, 1962, he climbed aboard the Friendship Seven and blasted into the atmosphere.

• While aboard he watched the Mercury spacecraft, monitoring for any kind of insight.
  • remember, he was one of the first people to ever go into space. This was mostly uncharted territory.
  • Glenn circled the globe about 3 times in just 5 hours while on his mission. Yeah, things go really fast in space without the drag of atmosphere.
  • While he was watching the craft, he also had ample time to observe our beautiful planet and the multiple sunrises and sunsets… I can only imagine how breathtaking of an experience that is.
• While he was experiencing the surreal, being one of the first people in space to see our planet from afar and watching the sun come into view… something freaky showed up!
  • What appeared to be tiny lights started to swirl about his spacecraft. He watched out the viewport (window) as he circled the Earth on his second run and saw tiny glowing lights surrounding the Friendship Seven craft. He was Awestruck.
  • Glenn radioed to Mission Control in an excited panic saying he witnessed his craft was “in a big mass of thousands of very small particles that brilliantly lit up like they’re luminescent.” – He said they wee yellowish-green and each looked like “a firefly on a real dark night.”
• Both Mission Control and Glenn didn’t know what they wre looking at at first.
  • Some down on Earth started to speculate Aliens! Like something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie or something.
  • Glenn’s initial thought was that he was witnessing nothing short of a Miracle
• Well it turns out it wasn’t Aliens… and while miracles are somewhat subjective, it wasn’t a miracle either.
  • The craft that Glenn was riding around the Earth, the Mercury Spacecraft had a ventilation system that took its human passenger’s bodily fluids and shot them into space. When the bodily liquids were jettisoned into the black void of space they froze immediately and if they were hit by the sun’s rays at the right angle… they would glow brightly.
• So those “thousands of celestial fireflies” were just John Glenn’s piss shining back at him… LOL he had pissed in the cosmic wind so to speak.

CREDIT:

• https://www.grunge.com/29108/real-stories-behind-bizarre-events-history/
• https://www.nasa.gov/content/profile-of-john-glenn