Alan Shepard

ALAN SHEPARD
 
Alan Shepard  (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman.  In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space; and in 1971, he walked on the Moon.  A graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, he became a naval aviator in 1946, and a test pilot in 1950.  He was selected as one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts in 1959, and in May 1961 he made the first crewed Project Mercury flight, Mercury-Redstone 3, in a spacecraft he named Freedom 7.  In 1971, Shepard commanded the Apollo 14 mission, piloting the Apollo Lunar Module Antares to the most accurate landing of the Apollo missions.  At age 47, he became the fifth, the oldest, and the earliest-born person to walk on the Moon, and the only one of the Mercury Seven astronauts to do so.  Shepard was promoted to rear admiral on August 25, 1971, the first astronaut to reach that rank.  (More from Wikipedia)
 

I go back a long way with Under Appreciation.  

 

Probably the most memorable events of my schoolboy days were seeing the early spaceflights.  Regular school went by the boards; the teachers brought in their portable TV sets, and we would all crowd around to watch, beginning with Alan Shepard’s sub-orbital flight in 1961 and John Glenn’s trip in orbit the following year.  

 

I was amazed to find that the intervening sub-orbital flight by Gus Grissom was almost completely forgotten; I just couldn’t understand it.  I looked it up on Wikipedia and was reminded that all didn’t go smoothly with that mission; though the whole flight was barely 15 minutes long, the capsule started filling up with water upon splashdown, and Grissom very nearly drowned when water started getting into his space suit also.  

 

Besides this second American flight into space, Gus Grissom was also on one of the Gemini spacecraft and thus the first American to go into space twice.  Gus Grissom was among the three astronauts that were killed in the cabin fire during a test for the planned launch of Apollo 1 in January 1967, twice illustrating that being an astronaut is one of the most dangerous professions today.  Virgin Galactic had a disastrous launch just last October, killing the pilot Michael Alsbury and seriously injuring the co-pilot Peter Siebold

 

(Year 5 Review)

 

Last edited: March 22, 2021