robert pearlman? we lost robert pearlman.tal flight in 1956, when he flew from california to new york, in three hours, 23 minutes. john glenn was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1959. over the mercury seven, the u.s. military pilot selected in 1959 to be the first astronauts, john glenn was the oldest, even then. he served as backup pilot for alan sheperd and virgil grissom who made the first two u.s. suborbital flights into the united states. john glen was the first orbital flight in atlas 6 in 1962. his space cap capsule, called friendship 7 was launched from cape can navarra in florida. its range was 100-miles to 162-miles in altitude. the flight was mostly according to plan, aside from a faulty thruster that forced john glenn to control friendship 7 manually and the faulty switch relayed inaccurate messages to mission control and he heat shield, he was told not to repeals the heat shield after. mission control hoped the heat of the shield had released. with us now is gene cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. john g