Space enthusiast aims to recreate Glenn flight

Journey would commemorate '62 Friendship 7 orbit

Wouldn't it be great if ...

Craig Russell has a proposal that strikes you at once as grand and, well, unlikely.

Wouldn't it be great if, in 2012, on the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's solo flight in the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule to become the first American to orbit the Earth, we celebrated by recreating that achievement?

And wouldn't it be great if we did it with private contributions and resources, at least as much as possible?

Russell, 54, is a former Air Force and cargo jet pilot now retired and living in Madison. He formed a nonprofit organization called Americans in Orbit-50 Years to get his plan moving.

His plan? Raise money to buy a rocket; refurbish one of the old Mercury capsules that never flew or else build one; put it atop the rocket; then launch, orbit and splash down.

Pretty much just like it happened in 1962, except he'd like this astronaut to go for the full seven or more orbits originally planned instead of coming back down after only three as Glenn was forced to.

Russell says that in 1998 he saw how NASA was involved in recreating the Wright brothers' first airplane and flight, and how the effort seemed to capture the public's attention. And there have been other recreations of aviation milestones, including Charles Lindbergh's solo crossing of the Atlantic in a replica of Spirit of St. Louis.

He thinks recreating Glenn's landmark journey could spur waning interest in the manned space flight program, especially among young people. It would both promote NASA and be a fitting way to commemorate the achievements of America's first astronauts, he says.

And he wants to do it because he's been an unabashed fan of the space program since he was a kid hearing about the Russians launching Sputnik in October of 1957.

"I came along just at the right time," Russell says. He remembers using toothpicks and Styrofoam to make little Sputniks to put on the Christmas tree.

Fast turnaround needed

As Russell outlines his plans during a visit to his small office on Madison Boulevard he makes it seem pretty straightforward, except ...

Except it's going to require a great deal of money very soon and a great deal of government and university and other institutions' cooperation very quickly.

Basically, his idea involves raising about $35 million to buy a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX, the company PayPal founder Elon Musk created that recently was awarded a NASA contract to demonstrate its ability to carry cargo and crews to and from the International Space Station.

Russell says SpaceX has a pad at Cape Canaveral that could be used for the Friendship 7 anniversary launch.

He thinks just another $10 million or so would be needed to build a Mercury space capsule. Why so cheaply? All the research, development and testing for the Mercury capsule was done by NASA decades ago and the plans are available in archives.

"If it was something from scratch, we wouldn't be talking about it," he says.

Russell says he's talked with "lead professors" at the Air Force Academy, Stanford, Utah State, Montana State and the University of Alabama in Huntsville about working together to build the capsule and mate it to the rocket, perhaps as a major hands-on education program for students.

He says the professors' reactions were that it's an interesting idea and, if he gets the money, then they would be interested in hearing more.

There will be room aboard the rocket for a payload, too. Russell says if enough money is raised, it could be used for students' experiments. If not, then the space could be sold, perhaps for a commercial satellite.

If the project gets this far, then the Federal Aviation Administration would have to get involved to approve the pilot, training and plans for the flight, Russell says.

Finally, the capsule would splash down in the ocean, just as Glenn's did. Retrieving it and the astronaut is another part of the plan still being worked out.

"I would hope the Navy could be talked into it," Russell says.

No procedure is in place for choosing an astronaut, but it would need to be a pilot with at least 1,500 hours in high performance aircraft, he says. Candidates would have to be 5-foot-11 or less - the same physical requirements NASA had for the tiny Mercury capsule.

And he or she must be a U.S. citizen.

"The whole thing is going to be an American deal because it's about an American achievement," Russell says.

Confident it will happen

Some well-known names in NASA and space history have agreed to be associated with the Americans In Orbit-50 Years advisory board, Russell says. Those include 95-year-old Konrad Dannenberg, a member of Wernher von Braun's original rocket team; Hugh Harris, former director of public affairs at Kennedy Space Center; Charles Arthur "Chuck" Biggs Sr., a former NASA official and former vice president and secretary of the Manned Space Flight Education Foundation; retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Coleman, who was chief of the Project Blue Book investigation into UFOs, has years of public affairs experience and has worked as a film producer; T.J. O'Malley, the launch director of the original Friendship 7 mission; and U.S. Space & Rocket Center CEO Larry Capps.

Capps says he's making the Space Center archives available to support Russell's project, but won't be involved in fundraising for Russell's plans.

"I admire his enthusiasm and energy in launching into such an endeavor, an event that would commemorate such an historic achievement by NASA and the nation," Capps says.

Last June, Russell and AIO-50 Vice President William Larson, a former ABC Radio News correspondent who covered the space program for years, talked about the idea with a NASA associate administrator in Washington to gauge possible support.

"He was not very enthusiastic," Russell says.

Russell also sent Glenn a PowerPoint presentation of the idea, then talked to the famous former astronaut and senator on the phone.

"He wished us well," Russell says.

Russell knows the odds are against him. If he's not able to raise significant interest and funding in 2008, he'll probably have to abort this mission.

"I would just move on to something else," he says.

But he believes the odds can be beaten. Russell points out his group is in much better shape than engineers were in the late 1950s and early '60s, when Project Mercury was being born. Then the funding was available but no one had ever done the science and technical work.

Now, the money isn't there yet, but all the previous design and engineering is available. We know it will work, Russell says, because we've used it before.

"It's done," he says. "That is a very significant thing."

He sincerely believes that if funding is forthcoming, his grand idea - the first recreation of a manned space flight and perhaps the most ambitious space science project ever attempted privately - is possible.

Russell says when he was filling out the paperwork to get Americans In Orbit-50 Years its 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization status, everyone told him it would never be granted.

"Well, 100 percent of those people were wrong," he says. "You have to believe.

"People either get it or they don't."