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Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we're here.

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.
Long
Way
Als
Surface
Moon
Walking

More quotes by Alan Shepard

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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.
Alan Shepard
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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
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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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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
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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.
Alan Shepard
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Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?
Alan Shepard
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I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.
Alan Shepard
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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.
Alan Shepard
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When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon I cried
Alan Shepard
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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
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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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The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.
Alan Shepard
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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.
Alan Shepard
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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.
Alan Shepard
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I can hit it farther on the moon. But actually, my swing is better here on Earth.
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.
Alan Shepard
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You've done it in the simulator so many times, you don't have a real sense of being excited when the flight is going on. You're excited before, but as soon as the liftoff occurs, you are busy doing what you have to do.
Alan Shepard
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You may not have any extra talent, but maybe you are just paying more attention to what you are doing.
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.
Alan Shepard
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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.
Alan Shepard