Robert Crippen
Robert Crippen
Robert Laurel "Bob" Crippen,, is a retired American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aerospace engineer, and former astronaut for the United States Department of Defense and for NASA. He was the Pilot of the first Space Shuttle flight and flew three more missions as Commander. Crippen received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth11 September 1937
CountryUnited States of America
break door fly frontiers opens required space steps sudden took walk
You don't break frontiers going into space by all of a sudden a big door opens and you walk through. You've got to take steps. Scott took the steps required for us to be able to fly into space.
american-astronaut several since
I thought it was going to take a lot more countdowns on the pad. We actually did scrub once, but I figured we'd scrub several times since it's a pretty complicated vehicle.
calm heart rate
My heart rate went up to 130-plus. Not John. He was nice, calm and collected.
american-astronaut love pilots truly vehicle
We were flying on a winged vehicle that would do reentry different than we had ever done before. So all of those were firsts. Test pilots truly love firsts.
american-astronaut came circling coming lake land pattern
For landing, we came in over Edwards about 40,000 feet. We set up for a big circling pattern coming in to land down on the lake bed.
american-astronaut began enjoy external front outside tank
It was only after we got the first maneuver off that I began to enjoy the outside view. We actually could see the external tank out in front of us.
american-astronaut certainly love moon shuttle truly vehicle
I would truly love to see us go back to the Moon and on to Mars; certainly the shuttle is not the right vehicle to make that happen.
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He was not a guy to throw a white scarf around his neck and hop into a plane. He was an engineer and a test pilot, capable of evaluating things from a technical standpoint.
fun
If you do a job, and you're not having fun doing it, you're probably not doing it right.
half world orbit
You're going very fast when you're on orbit, going around the world once every hour and a half.
airplane spaceships performing
This vehicle is performing like a champ. I've got a super spaceship under me.
dirty sleep camping
Living inside the shuttle was a little like camping out. We ended up sleeping in our seats. You had to pay attention to housekeeping, not get things too dirty.
beautiful real lucky
The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to spend some time looking out at this beautiful Earth that we're all lucky to inhabit.
opportunity space tests
Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.