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We worked with the engineers in the design and construction and testing phases in those various areas, then we would get back together at the end of the week and brief each other as to what had gone on.

Alan Shepard

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Alan Shepard
Age: 74 †
Born: 1923
Born: November 18
Died: 1998
Died: July 22
Aircraft Pilot
Astronaut
Entrepreneur
Naval Officer
United States Naval Aviator
Derry
New Hampshire
Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr.
Ends
Engineers
Together
Construction
Back
Various
Would
Areas
Worked
Design
Phases
Week
Brief
Gone
Testing

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You know, being a test pilot isn't always the healthiest business in the world.
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Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we're here.
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The excitement really didn't start to build until the trailer - which was carrying me, with a space suit with ventilation and all that sort of stuff - pulled up to the launch pad.
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I woke up an hour before I was supposed to, and started going over the mental checklist: where do I go from here, what do I do? I don't remember eating anything at all, just going through the physical, getting into the suit. We practiced that so much, it was all rote.
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I think first of all you have to be there for the right reason.
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You may not have any extra talent, but maybe you are just paying more attention to what you are doing.
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On the periscope . . . . What a beautiful view. Cloud cover over Florida - three to four tenths near the eastern coast. Obscured up to Hatteras . . . I can see [lake] Okeechobee. Identify Andros Island. Identify the reefs.
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Then I thought, with the same clubhead speed, the ball's going to go at least six times as far. There's absolutely no drag, so if you do happen to spin it, it won't slice or hook 'cause there's no atmosphere to make it turn.
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Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business.
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But when I was selected, after my very first tour of squadron duty, to become one of the youngest candidates for the test pilot school, I began to realize, maybe you are a little bit better.
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When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon I cried
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The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.
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If somebody'd said before the flight, 'Are you going to get carried away looking at the Earth from the Moon?' I would have say, 'No, no way.' But yet when I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried.
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Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?
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Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can't do this with two hands, but I'm going to try a little sand-trap shot here.
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Miles and miles and miles.
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I guess those of us who have been with NASA kind of understand the tremendous excitement and thrills and celebrations and national pride that went with the Apollo program is just something you're not going to create again, probably until we go to Mars.
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It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
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The first plane ride was in a homemade glider my buddy and I built. Unfortunately we didn't get more than four feet off the ground, because it crashed.
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We wanted to be in great shape, we wanted to be able to cope with zero gravity, we wanted to be able to cope with accelerations and decelerations and so on. So all of us trained so that we were probably in the best physical condition we had ever been in up until that point.
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