Alan Shepard Quotes

• 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

• You may not have any extra talent, but maybe you are just paying more attention to what you are doing.

  Alan Shepard

• You know, being a test pilot isn’t always the healthiest business in the world.

  Alan Shepard

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• We also knew it would be difficult, because of the financial condition of the family, for me to go to college.

  Alan Shepard

• They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

  Alan Shepard

• 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

• The rocket had worked perfectly, and all I had to do was survive the reentry forces. You do it all, in a flight like that, in a rather short period of time, just 16 minutes as a matter of fact.

  Alan Shepard

• 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

• 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

• 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.

  Alan Shepard

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Obviously I was challenged by becoming a Naval aviator, by landing aboard aircraft carriers and so on.

  Alan Shepard

• 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

• It’s been a long way, but we’re here.

  Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard (29)

Birth:	18th November, 1923
Death:	21st July, 1998
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Astronaut, Aviator, Pilot

About

Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. was an American naval aviator, test pilot, flag officer, NASA astronaut, and businessman, who in 1961 became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space. This Mercury flight was designed to enter space, but not to achieve orbit. Ten years later, at age 47 the oldest astronaut in the program, Shepard commanded the Apollo 14 mission, piloting the lander to the most accurate landing of the Apollo missions. He became the fifth person to walk on the Moon, and the only astronaut of the Mercury Seven to walk on the Moon. During the mission he hit two golf balls on the lunar surface. After leaving NASA he became a successful businessman. He died of leukemia in 1998, five weeks before the death of his wife of 53 years. They were survived by their three daughters.

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