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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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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.
Find
Pasadena
Moon
Saying

More quotes by 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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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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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
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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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The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.
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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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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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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Of course I was delighted the flight was over, but I still had to worry about cleaning up inside the cabin, I had to worry about the hatch, how to get in the sling, and so on.
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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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
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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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Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?
Alan Shepard
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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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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
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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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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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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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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
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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