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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.

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.
Better
Test
Ever
Tests
Challenge
Flown
Anybody
Astronaut
Challenges
Pilots
Business
Recognized
Keep
Experienced
Best
Flight

More quotes by Alan Shepard

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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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We need a continuing presence in space.
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Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again.
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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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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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The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.
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Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we're here.
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I can hit it farther on the moon. But actually, my swing is better here on Earth.
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Obviously I was challenged by becoming a Naval aviator, by landing aboard aircraft carriers and so on.
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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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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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There's no question that all the generations got excited about the first flights, with Kennedy's inspiration to go to the moon, leaving the planet for the first time, and fortunately coming back.
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I think first of all you have to be there for the right reason.
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Of course I was delighted the flight was over, but I still had to worry about cleaning up inside the cabin, I had to worry about the hatch, how to get in the sling, and so on.
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Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?
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Miles and miles and miles.
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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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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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I think the sense of family and family achievement, plus the discipline which I received there from that one-room school were really very helpful in what I did later on.
Alan Shepard
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You have to be there not for the fame and glory and recognition and being a page in a history book, but you have to be there because you believe your talent and ability can be applied effectively to operation of the spacecraft.
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