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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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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.
Planets
First
Moon
Flights
Time
Generations
Fortunately
Coming
Kennedy
Question
Flight
Excited
Inspiration
Leaving
Back
Planet
Firsts

More quotes by 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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On the periscope . . . . What a beautiful view. Cloud cover over Florida - three to four tenths near the eastern coast. Obscured up to Hatteras . . . I can see [lake] Okeechobee. Identify Andros Island. Identify the reefs.
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 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
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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.
Alan Shepard
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Miles and miles and miles.
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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Why don't you light that candle ?
Alan Shepard
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We need a continuing presence in space.
Alan Shepard
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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
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I know you're all saying I can go to the moon but I can't find Pasadena.
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
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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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I think first of all you have to be there for the right reason.
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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Obviously I was challenged by becoming a Naval aviator, by landing aboard aircraft carriers and so on.
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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We also knew it would be difficult, because of the financial condition of the family, for me to go to college.
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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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