Quote

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.

Alan Shepard

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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.
Ability
Applied
History
Operations
Book
Page
Believe
Recognition
Pages
Fame
Spacecraft
Glory
Effectively
Talent
Operation

More quotes by Alan Shepard

Image
Why don't you light that candle ?
Alan Shepard
Image
The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.
Alan Shepard
Image
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
Image
I think first of all you have to be there for the right reason.
Alan Shepard
Image
We also knew it would be difficult, because of the financial condition of the family, for me to go to college.
Alan Shepard
Image
We need a continuing presence in space.
Alan Shepard
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We had some adverse conditions in the '60s, in the '70s and the '80s. The agency has risen above that in the past and will rise above that again.
Alan Shepard
Image
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.
Alan Shepard
Image
I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.
Alan Shepard
Image
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
Image
Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?
Alan Shepard
Image
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.
Alan Shepard
Image
Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again.
Alan Shepard
Image
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
Image
Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started.
Alan Shepard
Image
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
Image
So everything turned out fine, and we were given the opportunity to go to Washington and be briefed on the project of man in space, and given the opportunity to choose whether we wanted to get involved or not.
Alan Shepard
Image
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.
Alan Shepard