A Quote by Robert Crippen
Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.
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I was a flight engineer on my second flight, which is the most senior position a non-American can have aboard the shuttle. We're the cockpit crew. We fly the vehicle up to space, dock the vehicle to the space station, undock it at the end of the mission, and return it to the ground.
Everyone who's been in space would, I'm sure, welcome the opportunity for a return to the exhilarating experiences there. For me, a flight in a shuttle, though most satisfying, would be anticlimactic after my flight to the moon. Plus, if I pursued a flight myself, people would think that was the reason I am trying to generate interest in public spaceflight. And that's not the purpose - I want to generate interest in long-range space exploration.
There's a huge amount of pressure on every astronaut, because when you get right down to it, the experiments that are conducted on a space flight, or the satellites that are carried up, the work that's to be done, is important and expensive work, and you are up there for a week or two on a Space Shuttle flight. The country has invested a lot of money in you and your training, and the Space Shuttle and everything that's in it, and you have to do things correctly. You can't make a mistake during that week or two that you're in space.
It's very sad that there's going to be a hiatus in manned space flight from the U.S. The Shuttle was a fantastic, hugely complex vehicle. It was inevitable it would come to an end, but this is the opportunity for the commercial world to get involved. As the Shuttle era ends, another window of opportunity opens.
The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindbergh was to commercial aviation.
The Americans are still the leaders in human space flight. I feel we have a danger here of kind of stagnating. We're kind of resting on our laurels and there's a danger going forward if we don't take bold steps to really support human space flight in this country that we could fall behind. After the space shuttle is retired, we're going to have a big gap, five to seven years, at least where we're not going to have the ability to send our own astronauts into space, we'll have to buy rides on the Russian Soyuz, and so that will be a pretty big step down for us.
I've always thought flight was fun and wanted to write about flight, and I knew a lot of househusbands who were having a really bad time with it. I thought flight might perk up a marriage here or there.
We were trying to do as much science as we could because that was the main purpose of the international space station. But without the shuttle to bring up heavy laboratory equipment and bring back samples, we were limited by what we could do, but I was proud that we actually accomplished more science that was planned for the flight. And I got a chance to do two Russian spacewalks on that flight, I had become an expert in U.S. spacewalks and using U.S. suits and techniques, and this was a chance to put on a Russian Orlan suit and do two construction space flights outside of the space station.
Exercise is very important, first of all if you think about it, especially in a long flight like a six month space flight and on the ISS. If you didn't exercise and used the analogy on earth, it would be like laying in bed. So, just imagine laying in bed for several months, and even just trying to get up and walk, you probably wouldn't be able to. But if you got up and you exercised two hours a day, you'd probably be okay, and that's the same in space.
What I'm trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.
I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.
In Corpus Christi in 2000 I did primary flight training, and for all of 2001 I was in Kingsville for advanced flight training, and that's where I learned to fly jets.
The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.
When I was in high school we had the first shuttle launch, and it reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the space program. I was in awe of the space shuttle as such a tremendous machine taking people into space. It seemed like such a wonderful thing that I wanted to be a part of.
The years of space flight since the orbiting of Sputnik I back in 1957 had produced many fascinating results, but they had also brought a realization of the many problems that surrounded the use of rockets for space flight.
You ever say a phrase you say all the time at the wrong time, feel like a complete idiot? Something like, 'You, too. You, too.' I was getting out of the cab at the airport, and the driver goes, 'Hey, have a nice flight.' 'You, too. You, too. You have a nice flight, too - in case you ever fly some day.
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