IN THIS SPELLBINDING account of an historic but troubled orbital
mission, noted space historian Colin Burgess takes us back to an
electrifying time in American history, when intrepid pioneers were
launched atop notoriously unreliable rockets at the very dawn of human
space exploration.
A nation proudly and collectively came to a standstill on the day this
mission flew; a day that will be forever enshrined in American
spaceflight history. On the morning of February 20, 1962, following
months of frustrating delays, a Marine Corps war hero and test pilot
named John Glenn finally blazed a path into orbit aboard a compact
capsule named Friendship 7.
The book's tension-filled narrative faithfully unfolds through
contemporary reports and the personal recollections of astronaut John
Glenn, along with those closest to the Friendship 7 story, revealing
previously unknown facts behind one of America's most ambitious and
memorable pioneering
space missions.