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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

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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.
Men
Involved
Fine
Space
Briefed
Whether
Washington
Opportunity
Project
Given
Turned
Wanted
Projects
Everything
Choose

More quotes by Alan Shepard

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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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You may not have any extra talent, but maybe you are just paying more attention to what you are doing.
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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.
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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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I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.
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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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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 think first of all you have to be there for the right reason.
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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.
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Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we're here.
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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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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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Miles and miles and miles.
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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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Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started.
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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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Because of the suit I was wearing, I couldn't make a good pivot on the swing. And I had to hit the ball with one hand.
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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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Why don't you light that candle ?
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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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