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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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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.
Risen
Agency
Rise
Conditions
Past
Adverse

More quotes by 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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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.
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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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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We wanted to be in great shape, we wanted to be able to cope with zero gravity, we wanted to be able to cope with accelerations and decelerations and so on. So all of us trained so that we were probably in the best physical condition we had ever been in up until that point.
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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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 must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.
Alan Shepard
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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
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You know, being a test pilot isn't always the healthiest business in the world.
Alan Shepard
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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.
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 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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Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we're here.
Alan Shepard
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Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again.
Alan Shepard