'We worked together and we went out socially,' he recalled. 'If he felt like you were ready to do business he was a very nice man, but if he felt like you were wasting his time, or putting him down, he could flat put it to you.'īeddingfield came to Cape Canaveral in 1959 as part of the Project Mercury team and therefore rubbed shoulders with all seven original astronauts. Retired NASA engineer Sam Beddingfield remembers Alan Shepard as 'a nice guy,' but one who did not suffer fools lightly. It was also true that Shepard bristled with a hair-trigger temper and a sometimes abrasive manner. He delighted in imitating comedian Bill Dana, who back in those days played the role of Jose Jimenez, an extremely reluctant astronaut.Īnd what went through Shepard's mind during that first flight? 'I was thinking that everything in here was supplied by the lowest bidder.' He emblazoned his moonwalk suit with red racing stripes. It was true that Shepard sparkled with a wicked sense of humor. It required three swings with an improvised six-iron, but he nailed the shot.Ī hole in one, he claimed, smack into that crater over there. Only one, Alan Shepard, played golf there. The endeavor eventually would carry 12 people to the moon. He announced the goal to Congress on May 25. Kennedy the confidence to commit the nation to the goal of landing men on the moon by the end of the decade. Shepard's success is credited with giving President John F. Later, he greeted officers of the Navy recovery ship with these words: 'Boy, what a ride!' The weightless portion of his ride lasted only four minutes and 45 seconds, but Shepard made the most of it.Īt one point, he peeked through a periscope at the world below. Shepard at 9:34 a.m.: 'Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started!' Relief arrived.įinally, Friendship 7 lifted off from Launch Pad 5. They decided he probably wouldn't electrocute himself. Here was a problem they hadn't anticipated. He wore a spacesuit so primitive it had no mechanism to deal with human waste. In that cramped capsule that morning, Shepard lay on his back for more than four hours. Shepard turned to Glenn and said, 'We're going to ride one of those things?'Īctually, it was a Redstone rocket that Shepard rode, but that was hardly the point. A minute later, it exploded, scattering debris everywhere. Two years earlier, Shepard and fellow astronaut John Glenn watched as an unmanned Atlas rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral. Technicians wrestled with problem after problem.

Now, the United States was trying to catch up in the space race, and in the bright glare of public scrutiny.

Three weeks earlier, Russia secretly launched the first human _ cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin _ into space.

NASA's technicians blandly called it Test Flight 108, but everyone knew what was at stake. That impression took shape at Cape Canaveral on May 5, 1961. Said President Clinton: 'Those of us who are old enough to remember the first space flights will always remember what an impression he made on us and on the world.' Shepard boldly went where no American had gone before. His flight, his courage, his body language and his verbal language _ 'A-Okay,' he triumphantly told mission controllers _ inspired a generation of scientists and astronauts and dreamers. Shepard was a charter member of the original, legendary Mercury 7 astronaut corps.

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