Alan Shepard Quotes

Everybody knows what the moon is, everybody knows what this decade is, and everybody can tell a live astronaut who returned from the moon from one who didn't

Ever since I saw the moon landing as a young teenager, I was determined I would go into space one day.

After a while the press of business in the province put an end to our philosophizing, and I returned with increased determination to my plans to fly to the Moon.

Most people never believed in the real possibility of going to the moon, and neither did I until I was in my twenties.

What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.

Having walked on the Moon, I know something about what we need to explore, really explore, in space.

Go to the moon - that's my dream.

When I was younger, humans went to the moon when I was about 4 years old, and I imagined that as I got older and became an adult that traveling in space was going to be fairly common and something that we all did. So I grew up believing that I'll be an astronaut just like these guys were that were going to the moon.

I can't think of anything specific growing up that pointed me toward NASA at all. I was interested in the Moon landings just about the same as everyone else of my generation. But I never really thought about being an astronaut or working in space myself.

I could not have told where those damned islands were within 2,000 miles.

Getting to space for satellites is tough. Getting to space with humans aboard is even tougher.

If you look, like, in 1960, there was no such thing as an astronaut. It was a totally fanciful concept, but nine years later or whatever, we were landing on the moon, which is just astonishing.

My desire to contribute to the spaceflight team as we move forward in our exploration of space has only increased over the years.

So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.

You only have to solve two problems when going to the moon: first, how to get there; and second, how to get back. The key is don't leave until you have solved both problems.

I ended up realizing that NASA was unlikely to get me into space, or get me to the moon or beyond, and I needed some other way to drive this.

Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.

I am going with him, if he climbs to the Moon.

I'm still ready to go to the moon, if they'll take me.

The great thing about being an astronaut is you kind of get to do a little bit of everything. I mean, we're going to ride a rocket uphill.

Spaceflight is nothing less than the exterior metaphor for the shamanic voyage. In other words, in our terms, the hallucinogenic experience. This is the way engineers get high. They go to the moon!

Space travel for everyone is the next frontier in the human experience.

I think I was very interested in the space program as a kid, watching the first Apollo missions to the moon, and it's something I thought that would be a lot of, of fun and exciting and a very worthwhile job.

My childhood dreams were focused on being part of the effort to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

I was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren't that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting.