^* Between the astronauts who used their status to win a place in the Senate and the senators who used their influence to win a spot on a NASA mission, there’s practically been a Senate quorum in space. (John Glenn managed to work it both ways, returning to space as a seventy-seven-year-old senator.) The gambit occasionally backfires, as when Jeff Bingaman defeated Apollo-astronaut-turned-New-Mexico-senator Harrison Schmitt using the campaign slogan “What on Earth has he done for you lately?”