I thought it was going to take a lot more countdowns on the pad. We actually did scrub once, but I figured we'd scrub several times since it's a pretty complicated vehicle.
It is a challenge to have your launch date slip continuously.
My first mission was six and a half months. We weren't exactly sure how long it was going to be because I went up and back on the space shuttle, which was dependent on weather for launch and landing.
The worst thing that you can do in terms of bringing a product up to the market is to be two days after someone else has brought a similar product to the international market-It's dead.
I'm glad that it didn't take as long to get Shepard off the ground as it's taken this series. I'd begun to think the Congo would be ahead of us in the space race before Whispering Smith ever got on the air.
We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.
You can believe or you can doubt yourself. It's the difference between a gap being one metre late that you're gonna launch, then it's three seconds and you're sat on the wheel and you're about to lose.
