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
space people fantastic
The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.
believe long impossible
When you work really hard for something for a long time it's almost impossible to believe that it's coming true.
dark ions glowing
We were on the dark side of the Earth when we started to see outside the window this soft pink glow, which is a lot of little angry ions out there going very fast. We were hitting them very fast.
military half astronaut
I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67. That program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us.
space want firsts
If you want to go into space first time on a new vehicle that's never been flown, you want to go with a pro.
orbit earth speed
Looking down at the Earth, you started to pick up a sense of speed much more than I had noticed on orbit.
mystery crew selection
Selection of crews is always been somewhat of a mystery.
crew
The nature of the shuttle was, we couldn't put a crew escape system in it.
two adverse-effects littles
We were only on orbit a little over two days, so we had no adverse effects from being weightless.
airplane eight sitting-still
The powered flight took a total of about eight and a half minutes. It seemed to me it had gone by in a lash. We had gone from sitting still on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center to traveling at 17,500 miles an hour in that eight and a half minutes. It is still mind-boggling to me. I recall making some statement on the air-to-ground radio for the benefit of my fellow astronauts, who had also been in the program a long time, that it was well worth the wait.