American - Astronaut | November 18, 1923 - July 21, 1998
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
SchoolBetterYouTestDutyBecome
I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects, but I think I was a pretty good student.
GoodScienceMindMeThinkStudent
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.
OpportunityManSpaceChooseGoOut
It's been a long way, but we're here.
LongWayLong WayHereBeen
I think all of us certainly believed the statistics which said that probably 88% chance of mission success and maybe 96% chance of survival. And we were willing to take those odds.
SuccessChanceThinkSurvivalSaid
I think the sense of family and family achievement, plus the discipline which I received there from that one-room school were really very helpful in what I did later on.
FamilyDisciplineAchievementSchool
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.
EatingRememberGoOverUpAnything
Obviously I was challenged by becoming a Naval aviator, by landing aboard aircraft carriers and so on.
BecomingAircraftLandingChallenged
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.
WorryCleaningFlightInsideCabin
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.
SpaceMeStartBuildExcitementUp
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.
RideFeetMoreFirstGroundGet
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.
TimeSurviveShortYouFlightJust
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