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.
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.
The pilot looked at his cues of attitude and speed and orientation and so on and responded as he would from the same cues in an airplane, but there was no way it flew the same. The simulators had showed us that.
Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business.
Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started.
Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can’t do this with two hands, but I’m going to try a little sand-trap shot here.
Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again.
You have to be there not for the fame and glory and recognition and being a page in a history book, but you have to be there because you believe your talent and ability can be applied effectively to operation of the spacecraft.
Then I thought, with the same clubhead speed, the ball’s going to go at least six times as far. There’s absolutely no drag, so if you do happen to spin it, it won’t slice or hook ’cause there’s no atmosphere to make it turn.
The suit was so clumsy, being pressurized, it was impossible to get two hands comfortably on the handle and it’s impossible to make any kind of a turn. It was kind of a one-handed chili-dip.
We had some adverse conditions in the ’60s, in the ’70s and the ’80s. The agency has risen above that in the past and will rise above that again.
I just wanted to be the first one to fly for America, not because I’d end up in the pages of history books.
I think about the personal accomplishment, but there’s more of a sense of the grand achievement by all the people who could put this man on the moon.
Of course, in our grade school, in those days, there were no organized sports at all. We just went out and ran around the school yard for recess.
Because of the suit I was wearing, I couldn’t make a good pivot on the swing. And I had to hit the ball with one hand.
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.
We wanted to be in great shape, we wanted to be able to cope with zero gravity, we wanted to be able to cope with accelerations and decelerations and so on. So all of us trained so that we were probably in the best physical condition we had ever been in up until that point.
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.
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.
Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?
We’re going to see passengers in space stations in 15 years, who will be able to buy a ticket and spend a weekend in space.