I Must Admit, Maybe I Am A

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.

I Woke Up An Hour Before I Was Supposed To, And Started Going Over The Mental Checklist: Where Do I Go From Here, What Do I Do? I Don't Remember Eating Anything At All, Just Going Through The Physical, Getting Into The Suit. We Practiced That So Much, It Was All Rote.

There's No Question That All The Generations Got Excited About The First Flights, With Kennedy's Inspiration To Go To The Moon, Leaving The Planet For The First Time, And Fortunately Coming Back.

It's A Very Sobering Feeling To Be Up In Space And Realize That One's Safety Factor Was Determined By The Lowest Bidder On A Government Contract.

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.