Mark and Scott Kelly: John Glenn, our hero

By Mark Kelly and Scott Kelly December 16

Mark and Scott Kelly are retired U.S. astronauts.

Two years before we were born and three decades before we each had the chance to leave our planet in a spaceship, our parents and 100 million other people heard the news: A 40-year-old Marine Corps lieutenant colonel named John Glenn had become the first American to orbit Earth.
To this day, Glenn’s journey remains as awe-inspiring as it was audacious. It was an act of patriotism and heroism in a life full of them.
The word “hero” gets thrown around a lot. But John Glenn defined it.
Consider that Glenn even agreed to take the elevator to the top of that Atlas rocket, climbed on and told the flight controllers to light the fuse.
As a NASA astronaut, Glenn had seen those Atlas rockets fail in unmanned tests over and over, in massive, catastrophic explosions. And the team at NASA was unsure it could bring him home safely without his capsule disintegrating during reentry. That was not exactly a confidence booster.
He knew the risks, and he flew anyway.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-and-scott-kelly-john-glenn-our-hero/2016/12/16/d4a09dce-befe-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.b186e81f05cb