Alan Shepard Quotes

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen.

I don't have to go into outer space to write about an astronaut.

In 2009 I went up on the space shuttle. I was in space for 16 days and docked at the space station for 11 days. The entire crew did five space walks, of which I was involved with three of them. When you're doing a space walk, you always have a buddy with you. It's a very dangerous environment when you're doing a space walk.

Finally my dream came true in that there was a possibility that I could travel to the International Space Station. I've gone through the medicals and the training and now I'm officially, by the Russian Space Federation, a cosmonaut in training.

I wanted to get superimposed on a shuttle launch.

Once you get into the spacecraft, you're on your way, you've got a mission, you're focused, and it's really exciting.

Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started.

As someone who flew two space capsules and twice landed in the ocean, I can attest from personal experience how much logistics work is needed to get you home.

Now, as an astronaut, I have to bring a Sharpie with me everywhere - so I have a pen to sign autographs.

One of the jokes on our flight is that, if we have a normal entry day going, the plan is for me... to actually take the orbiter first and fly it for maybe 10 or 15 seconds and then hand it on over to Scooter.

Every shuttle mission's been successful.

So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion - because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do.

For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship.

When you see the orbiter headed out the launch pad and then crawling up the hill and being hard down on the pad, it does something to you.

As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes.

When you launch in a rocket, you're not really flying that rocket. You're just sort of hanging on.

My job during the EVAs, the spacewalks, is to act as the inside coordinator. I remain on the aft flight deck of the shuttle, and I act in a manner to help the gentlemen outside, my fellow crewmates, who are performing the EVA tasks.

Living inside the shuttle was a little like camping out. We ended up sleeping in our seats. You had to pay attention to housekeeping, not get things too dirty.

I operated a periscopic TV camera so the commander, Anatoly Artsebarsky, could establish where we were heading. It is real teamwork on Soyuz.

It takes a few years to prepare for a space mission.

I'm not going into infinity. I'm going into low earth orbit.

I've been approached to do some things with astronauts and the preparation that astronauts go through.

But every crew that makes it to orbit is lucky. Spaceflight's not easy.