GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
ALAN SHEPARD

You’re on your way, José!

Deke Slayton

Radio transmission from Mission Control to Alan Shepard, at liftoff of Freedom 7, first American in space, 09:34 EST, 5 May 1961. José is almost certainly a nod to Bill Dana’s comic character José Jiménez, a mock 'astronaut' figure popular around the Mercury era. Shepard replied:

“Ahh, Roger; lift-off and the clock is started.” (Project Mercury Working Paper No. 192, Postlaunch Report for Mercury-Redstone No. 3)

Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we’re here.

Alan Shepard

Commander Apollo 14, upon becoming the fifth and oldest man to walk on the Moon.

You know, being a test pilot isn’t always the healthiest business in the world.

Alan Shepard

Quoted in the 2004 book : The First American in Space (The Library of Astronaut Biographies)

I’m a hell of a lot cooler than you guys. Why don’t you just fix your little problem and light this candle?

Alan Shepard Jr.

Radio transmission to Mission Control regards another delay during his four hour sit atop the 10-story, 33-ton Freedom 7/Mercury-Redstone 3 rocket while last-minute problems were being fixed. Cape Canaveral Air Station, just prior to the United States’ first manned space mission, 5 May 1961. Quoted by Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Light This Candle: What You Need to Know About Alan Shepard's Historic Spaceflight, 30 April 2021.

Unfortunately the suit is so stiff I can't do that with two hands, but I’m going to try an ol' sand trap shot here.

Alan Shepard

Apollo 14, golfing on the Moon. How far did he hit the ball with his six iron? "Miles and miles and miles!"

On the periscope. What a beautiful view. Cloud cover over Florida. 3 to 4 tenths near the eastern coast. Obscured up to Hatteras. I can see Okeechobee. Identify Andros Island. Identify the Reefs.

Alan B. Shepard Jr.

First American in space, Freedom 7, 5 May 1961. Quoted in Postlaunch Report for Mercury-Redstone No. 3 (MR-3), NASA Project Mercury Working Paper No. 192, 16 June 1961.

Let us hope that the advent of a successful flying machine, now only dimly foreseen and nevertheless thought to be possible, will bring nothing but good into the world; that it shall abridge distance, make all parts of the globe accessible, bring men into closer relation with each other, advance civilization, and hasten the promised era in which there shall be nothing but peace and good will among all men.

Octave Chanute

Last words of the conclusion chapter, Progress in Flying Machines, 1894. In a 1976 reprint of this classic aviation book, Alan Shepard, first American in space and Apollo 14 moonwalker, wrote in the foreword:

“The last paragraph of this book deserves mention first because it explains the reasons for publishing this book, and for republishing it today.”



See four other Octave Chanute great aviation quotes.

Freedom 7 is still go, the trajectory is A-OK. Mission is still A-OK, full go.

John 'Shorty' Powers

NASA Public Affairs Officer, the voice of Mercury Control, at launch of rocket carrying America’s first man in space, 5 May 1961. Often attributed to Alan Shepard, but the astronaut’s didn't like the phrase, and the NASA publication, This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury, says in a footnote that a replay of the flight voice communications tape disclosed that Shepard himself did not use the term. Flight Controller Gene Kranz said in the 2000 book Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond:

“Shorty Powers announced to the world that “everything is A-OK,” a phrase hated by the controllers and crews as “too Hollywood,” but one that soon became a part of the American vocabulary. It seems quaint now, all these years later, virtually unused, almost forgotten.”

The 1979 book The Right Stuff says Powers had borrowed the expression from NASA engineers who used it during radio transmission tests because “the sharper sound of A cut through the static better than O”. It became a spaceage idiom for ‘everything is going smoothly’.