Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Miles and miles and miles.
Alan Shepard
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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.
Miles
Golf
More quotes by Alan Shepard
Obviously I was challenged by becoming a Naval aviator, by landing aboard aircraft carriers and so on.
Alan Shepard
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.
Alan Shepard
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
I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me.
Alan Shepard
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
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.
Alan Shepard
I just wanted to be the first one to fly for America, not because I'd end up in the pages of history books.
Alan Shepard
The pilot looked at his cues of attitude and speed and orientation and so on and responded as he would from the same cues in an airplane, but there was no way it flew the same. The simulators had showed us that.
Alan Shepard
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.
Alan Shepard
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.
Alan Shepard
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.
Alan Shepard
I know you're all saying I can go to the moon but I can't find Pasadena.
Alan Shepard
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.
Alan Shepard
I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It's fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it's tough that people are fighting each other here on Earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space.
Alan Shepard
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.
Alan Shepard
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.
Alan Shepard
The suit was so clumsy, being pressurized, it was impossible to get two hands comfortably on the handle and it's impossible to make any kind of a turn. It was kind of a one-handed chili-dip.
Alan Shepard
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.
Alan Shepard
When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon I cried
Alan Shepard
I think about the personal accomplishment, but there's more of a sense of the grand achievement by all the people who could put this man on the moon.
Alan Shepard