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
Its a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that ones safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract. – Alan Shepard
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. – Alan Shepard
Id 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
I suppose theres a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And its the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom. – George Will