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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.

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.
Start
Pulled
Space
Carrying
Stuff
Suit
Didn
Suits
Ventilation
Really
Excitement
Trailer
Build
Pads
Walking
Trailers
Sort
Launch

More quotes by Alan Shepard

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I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects, but I think I was a pretty good student.
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The same way people are now paying a couple thousand dollars to fly to other parts of the world, people will be paying $50,000 to spend a weekend on a space station.
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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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And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.
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Later, in the early teens, I used to ride my bike every Saturday morning to the nearest airport, ten miles away, push airplanes in and out of the hangars, and clean up the hangars.
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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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Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?
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I just wanted to be the first one to fly for America, not because I'd end up in the pages of history books.
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I think first of all you have to be there for the right reason.
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We're going to see passengers in space stations in 15 years, who will be able to buy a ticket and spend a weekend in space.
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I think all of us certainly believed the statistics which said that probably 88% chance of mission success and maybe 96% chance of survival. And we were willing to take those odds.
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Whether you are an astronomer or a life scientist, geophysicist, or a pilot, you've got to be there because you believe you are good in your field, and you can contribute, not because you are going to get a lot of fame or whatever when you get back.
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We also knew it would be difficult, because of the financial condition of the family, for me to go to college.
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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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Miles and miles and miles.
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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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Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again.
Alan Shepard
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Of course, in our grade school, in those days, there were no organized sports at all. We just went out and ran around the school yard for recess.
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I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.
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The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.
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