Commander Shepard Quotes

It’s all in my mind. I’m in my right mind now, and my right mind is crazy. "You need to wake up, Ella." The words are a command I cannot obey.

NASA officials did not know that commander Alan Shepard had secretly smuggled a six-iron golf club into the space capsule. They were surprised when he proceeded to take out the club and hit a golf ball two hundred yards on the lunar surface.

At T minus 2 minutes and 40 seconds there was another hold. Now Shepard could hear engineers in the blockhouse agonizing over the fuel pressure in the Redstone, which was running high. He could sense what would be coming next. They were going to talk themselves into resetting the pressure valve inside the booster engine manually. That would mean postponing the launch for another two days at least. He could see it coming! They were going to scrub the whole thing, lest they hold themselves accountable for his hide if something went wrong! This was not a job for Smilin’ Al. It was time for the Icy Commander to arrive and take charge. So he got on the circuit and put the glacial edge on his voice, as only he could do it, and he said: “All right, I’m cooler than you are. Why don’t you fix your little problem … and light this candle.

The technological audacity of the Apollo program, with it's largely symbolic payload, was also sinking into the trivialisation that Guy Debord had identified the decade before as the underside of media spectacle. When Commander Alan Shepard strapped a six iron to a lunar excavation tool and whacked two golf balls across the Fra Mauro Highlands, he became, for a spell, nothing more than a tourist, that agent of commodification whose freedom of movement, as Debord had written, is "nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.

All the many successes and extraordinary accomplishments of the Gemini still left NASA’s leadership in a quandary. The question voiced in various expressions cut to the heart of the problem: “How can we send men to the moon, no matter how well they fly their ships, if they’re pretty helpless when they get there? We’ve racked up rendezvous, docking, double-teaming the spacecraft, starting, stopping, and restarting engines; we’ve done all that. But these guys simply cannot work outside their ships without exhausting themselves and risking both their lives and their mission. We’ve got to come up with a solution, and quick!” One manned Gemini mission remained on the flight schedule. Veteran Jim Lovell would command the Gemini 12, and his space-walking pilot would be Buzz Aldrin, who built on the experience of the others to address all problems with incredible depth and finesse. He took along with him on his mission special devices like a wrist tether and a tether constructed in the same fashion as one that window washers use to keep from falling off ledges. The ruby slippers of Dorothy of Oz couldn’t compare with the “golden slippers” Aldrin wore in space—foot restraints, resembling wooden Dutch shoes, that he could bolt to a work station in the Gemini equipment bay. One of his neatest tricks was to bring along portable handholds he could slap onto either the Gemini or the Agena to keep his body under control. A variety of space tools went into his pressure suit to go along with him once he exited the cabin. On November 11, 1966, the Gemini 12, the last of its breed, left earth and captured its Agena quarry. Then Buzz Aldrin, once and for all, banished the gremlins of spacewalking. He proved so much a master at it that he seemed more to be taking a leisurely stroll through space than attacking the problems that had frustrated, endangered, and maddened three previous astronauts and brought grave doubts to NASA leadership about the possible success of the manned lunar program. Aldrin moved down the nose of the Gemini to the Agena like a weightless swimmer, working his way almost effortlessly along a six-foot rail he had locked into place once he was outside. Next came looping the end of a hundred-foot line from the Agena to the Gemini for a later experiment, the job that had left Dick Gordon in a sweatbox of exhaustion. Aldrin didn’t show even a hint of heavy breathing, perspiration, or an increased heartbeat. When he spoke, his voice was crisp, sharp, clear. What he did seemed incredibly easy, but it was the direct result of his incisive study of the problems and the equipment he’d brought from earth. He also made sure to move in carefully timed periods, resting between major tasks, and keeping his physical exertion to a minimum. When he reached the workstation in the rear of the Gemini, he mounted his feet and secured his body to the ship with the waist tether. He hooked different equipment to the ship, dismounted other equipment, shifted them about, and reattached them. He used a unique “space wrench” to loosen and tighten bolts with effortless skill. He snipped wires, reconnected wires, and connected a series of tubes. Mission Control hung on every word exchanged between the two astronauts high above earth. “Buzz, how do those slippers work?” Aldrin’s enthusiastic voice came back like music. “They’re great. Great! I don’t have any trouble positioning my body at all.” And so it went, a monumental achievement right at the end of the Gemini program. Project planners had reached all the way to the last inch with one crucial problem still unsolved, and the man named Aldrin had whipped it in spectacular fashion on the final flight. Project Gemini was

Likewise, in the eleventh-hour simulations atop the rocket at the Cape. Al showed only one sign of stress: the cycles—Smilin’ Al/Icy Commander—now came one on top of the other, in the same place, and alternated so suddenly that the people around him couldn’t keep track. They learned a little more about the mysterious Al Shepard here in the eleventh hour. Smilin’ Al was a man who wanted very much to be liked, even loved, by those around him. He wanted not just their respect but also their affection. Now, in April, on the eve of the great adventure, Smilin’ Al was more jovial and convivial than ever. He did his José Jiménez routine. His great grin spread wider and his great beer-call eyes beamed brighter than ever before. Smilin’ Al was crazy about a comedy routine that had been developed by a comedian named Bill Dana. It concerned the Cowardly Astronaut and was a great hit. Dana portrayed the Cowardly Astronaut as a stupid immigrant Mexican named José Jiménez, whose tongue wrapped around the English language like a taco. The idea was to interview Astronaut Jiménez like a news broadcaster. You’d say things like: “What has been the most difficult part of astronaut training, José?” “Obtaining de maw-ney, señor.” “The money? What for?” “For de bus back to Mejico, you betcha, reel queeck, señor.” “I see. Well, now, José, what do you plan to do once you’re in space?” “Gonna cry a lot, I theeeenk.” Smilin’ Al used to crack up over this routine. He liked to do the José Jiménez part; and if he could get someone to feed him the straight lines, he was in Seventh Heaven, Smilin’ Al version. Feed him the lines for his José Jiménez knock-off, and he’d treat you like the best beer-call good buddy you ever had. Of course, the Cowardly Astronaut routine was also a perfectly acceptable way for bringing up, on the oblique, as it were, the subject of the righteous stuff that the first flight into space would require. But that was probably unconscious on Al’s part. The main thing seemed to be the good fun, the camaraderie, the closeness and blustery affection of the squadron on the eve of battle. In these moments you saw Smilin’ Al supreme. And in the next moment— —some poor Air Force lieutenant, thinking this was the same Smilin’ Al he had been joking and carrying on with last night, would sing out, “Hey, Al! Somebody wants you on the phone!”—and all at once there would be Al, seething with an icy white fury, hissing out: “If you have something to tell me, Lieutenant … you will call me ‘Sir’!” And the poor devil wouldn’t know what hit him. Where the hell did that freaking arctic avalanche come from? And then he would realize that … all at once the Icy Commander was back in town.

Nobody ever fell in love without being a little brave.

Shepard County Sheriff Cal Lund had been her father’s best friend and second in command, and he took over when Big Jim died. Tori’s parents were both only children, so when her father died, she had no other family to lean on. All she had was Cal and his wife Lucy.