On: John Glenn has died

[masklinn]

Pretty much. Which is the daily life of a test pilot (especially at the time, some planes were absolute death traps). They knew the engineers were trying to make things as safe as possible, but they were still sitting atop giant missiles full of stuff going kabloey if you looked at it wrong: Glenn's first orbit was launched by an Atlas LV-3B, a modified and saferized derivation of the Atlas D ICBM powered by RP1/LOX.

Well to be fair RP1/LOX is fairly tame when compared with H2/LOX or Hydrazine derivatives.

[astrodust → masklinn]

It's like Chuck Yeager says, any landing where you survive is a great landing, and any landing where the plane can fly again is exceptional.

He flew a firecracker over the speed of sound. That thing could have easily exploded when it hit that velocity due to unpredicted aero loading.

Test pilots are made of sterner stuff than just about everyone else on the planet, but they're not ignorant of the risks.