The Corvette -
America's "premier" sports car.
The big love-in between the American astronauts and the Corvette
started with Alan Shepard...
...the first American in space in 1961.
And on his safe return to Earth,
he was given a free Corvette by General Motors,
a sort of medal for services to the country.
(MILITARY MARCH PLAYS)
However, even though Shepard was deemed worthy
of a tickertape hero's welcome by the American public,
NASA saw astronauts like him as government employees,
and as such, unable to accept free gifts.
So, an enterprising Corvette dealer near the Cape Kennedy Space Center in Florida
came up with a cunning idea.
He offered the astronauts a special deal
whereby they could lease a Corvette for the enormous sum of...one dollar.
Now, NASA couldn't complain about that.
Technically the cars weren't free, they were being paid for.
So all the astronauts bit his hand off.
Gus Grissom, the second American in space, had one.
So did Gordon Cooper, a man so cool
he actually fell asleep on the launch pad
while waiting for lift-off.
Jim Lovell, the hero of the ill-fated
"Houston, we've had a problem" Apollo 13 mission -
he too was a Corvette man.
Basically, in the '60s and '70s,
Cape Kennedy and the surrounding roads
were awash with spacemen driving one-dollar Corvettes.
But it was the holy trinity of Shepard, Cooper and Grissom
who were the real petrolheads.
The good news for them was that the Space Center here at Kennedy
was criss-crossed with lovely wide, straight roads
which NASA engineers used to move stuff about -
i.e. rockets.
But that meant, as far as those three were concerned,
that they were in heaven.
They'd come to places like this after work
and just drag race the hell out of their cars,
and then they'd have them modified,
and then they'd drag race them a bit more.
Gordo Cooper allegedly had his car modified up to 180 miles an hour,
and he and Gus Grissom even used to go and pit crew
for a racing team if they had a weekend off.
They liked cars.
Then there was astronaut John Glenn,
the first American to orbit the Earth,
and as a test pilot, the first man
to cross the American continent at supersonic speeds.
Clearly, this was a man comfortable with putting his foot down.
However, the car he drove
was not quite as sporty as a Corvette.
Yes, John Glenn, holder of supersonic flight records
and the first American to orbit the Earth, drove this.
It's called a Prinz.
It's made by the long-dead German car maker NSU,
and it's a microscopic economy car.
It has an engine of just under 600cc, two cylinders.
(ENGINE JUDDERS)
0-60?
35 seconds.
But Glenn wasn't worried about the sedate pace.
He lived out in the sticks,
he had a long commute to Cape Kennedy,
and he wanted a car that gave him good gas mileage.
Right, let's give it some beans and see what it'll do.
(ENGINE HUMS)
That's what it'll do.
-(CAR SQUEAKS) -Oh, man!
(ENGINE REVS)
I've read accounts by the astronauts of what the rocket launches were actually like -
a lot of noise, a lot of clattering, a lot of banging.
Well, John Glenn was ready.