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
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.
capable engineer guy hop neck scarf technical test throw white
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.
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.
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.
two adverse-effects littles
We were only on orbit a little over two days, so we had no adverse effects from being weightless.
crew
The nature of the shuttle was, we couldn't put a crew escape system in it.
mystery crew selection
Selection of crews is always been somewhat of a mystery.
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.
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.
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.
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.
opportunity space tests
Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.
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.
half world orbit
You're going very fast when you're on orbit, going around the world once every hour and a half.