[wingspan33]

I'm so sorry to hear that John Glenn has passed. His first space flight took place on my 6th birthday. Hard to forget that kind of thing.

The link to hang gliding is, of course, Rogallo's spacecraft reentry "wing" which evolved into our own basic hang glider. Oddly enough I think it was originally called a paraglider.

Johm Glenn, and the US space program in general, helped inspire me to want to learn how to fly. How can I ever say "Thank You!" enough?

[Bob Kuczewski]

Godspeed John Glenn.

[Rick Masters]

Most people don't realize that a low-time hang glider pilot took John Glenn into space for his last orbit.

When he was a kid, Discovery astronaut Steve Robinson pestered his parents until they bought him flying lessons for his 14th birthday. He exhausted the money in a couple of weeks, but his appetite lingered -- worse than ever -- so he built himself a hang glider. "Foolhardy?" Robinson mused, when asked earlier this year about the dangers of flying aboard a 21-year-old spaceship with 2.5 million parts, the vast majority of them designed during the previous century. "Foolhardy is when I jumped off a cliff on a hang glider when I was 15," he said. "This isn't even close."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201623.html

Robinson is wrong about the risk, however. Eighteen of the 430 humans who have flown in space have died in accidents, most during re-entry. That's a 4.19% porbability of death and is far, far in excess of hang gliding or paragliding risk.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/36/2