John Glenn Checks Out Shuttle Seat For Size

Sen. John Glenn, America’s oldest astronaut, got to try out a seat in the space shuttle Columbia this week, nine months before his own shuttle mission.

Columbia, which is docked at Cape Canaveral awaiting its next mission in April, was one of many stops this week on an orientation tour for NASA’s newest rookie. He also witnessed Thursday night’s launch of the shuttle Endeavour.

Compared to the Friendship 7 capsule that took him around the globe in 1962, putting him in the history books as America’s first man in orbit, the shuttle seemed enormous, the 76-year-old Ohio Democrat told reporters Friday.

Then again, he said, patting the arms of his office seat, “This is more spacious, just this chair, than I was in the first time.”

Glenn is to be a payload specialist aboard Discovery on a launch tentatively set for Oct. 29. He’s been given another ticket into space to conduct experiments examining the effects of space on the human body.

Since he was strapped down in his Mercury capsule, Glenn has never floated in space - never experienced weightlessness apart from long-ago training in the specially outfitted aircraft the astronauts call the “vomit comet.” He told reporters he’s particularly curious about whether he’ll be among the 80 percent of astronauts who become ill.

“I don’t have a tendency toward airsickness,” the former test pilot and fighter pilot said, bragging about how he could “bounce around in the back of a hot airplane” without becoming nauseated.