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SPACE STORIES: Jim Prim worked for NASA during an exciting era, training the seven original American astronauts.
(Times-News (Burlington, NC) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 9--The astronauts, known as the Mercury Seven, were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. Of the seven, Carpenter and Glenn are still alive.
NASA chose the astronauts in 1959. Members of the group flew on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft and Glenn even flew on a space shuttle mission in 1998 at the age of 77.
Though his duties with NASA changed, Prim later knew other famous astronauts such as Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. Prim, who lives in Southern Pines, spoke Wednesday to students at Turrentine Middle School. His granddaughter, Rachel Daughtry, is in seventh grade there.
Prim's daughter, Kim Daughtry, also came to Turrentine on Wednesday. She brought a small rubber doll Armstrong gave her right before she turned 8. The doll is wearing a metallic-looking dress and helmet. Armstrong told her he brought it back from the moon.
"There's a store up there, and I got this doll from the store," he said. Daughtry said she had to think about it, but of course, she didn't believe him.
Some students asked Prim if he'd ever been into space himself. He hadn't, though at one point he'd spent more time than any astronaut in a zerogravity airplane.
Prim told students how far technology has advanced since his time with NASA.
"The computer I trained the astronauts with took up a room this size," he said while standing in a classroom at Turrentine. "Technology has changed so much ... (it) blows me away." He worked for the agency as an aeronautics engineer from 1960 to 1978 after graduating from North Carolina State University.
He told students he'd initially planned to serve in the U.S. Air Force, but started work for NASA after hurting his shoulders.
Besides training astronauts, Prim taught flight controllers. He served as one himself, traveling to locations including Hawaii and the west coast of Africa. In NASA's early years, people were stationed at different points around the globe to communicate with spacecraft crew members.
After leaving NASA, Prim worked for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Asked which astronaut was his favorite, Prim, 70, didn't hesitate.
"John Glenn," he said. "He was a great ambassador for the space program." Prim said Glenn, a Marine who later went into politics and served in the U.S. Senate, had a good rapport with the public and press.
Among the more unusual occurrences of his time with NASA, Prim wore a spacesuit on an NBC TV program about the space program to represent an astronaut.
"I split the zipper out of John Glenn's backup suit," he said.
Carol Story, a seventh-grade teacher at Turrentine, said Prim is part of a series of speakers who are visiting the school to show students how they can use their education to be successful. "You can set your goals and be and do anything you want to do in life," she said after Prim spoke to one group of students.
To see more of the Times-News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thetimesnews.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, Times-News, Burlington, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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