way to orbit. when he got there, he had more problems. he had a failed thruster that forced him to fly manually and you may know the story about his faulty heat shield. we thought he was going to burn up on re-entry. he had a very, very tense ride back to earth. >> wow. talk to me about the mood of the country. i know you were a young boy at the time but was it a nation coming together, being inspired by watching these astronauts like john glenn? >> everything stopped when john glenn or alan shepard, all the mercury astronauts took their flights, everything stopped in my classroom, the teachers rolled in a borrowed television that some parent brought in, we stopped the day to watch the oshit and the splashdown and i got the sense as a 7-year-old this was important to the country. the space race had come right to my hometown. we were building the rockets for the next generation, the gemini