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PEOPLE IN AMERICA -October 27, 2002: Alan Shepard
By Avi Arditti
VOICE ONE:
I'm Shirley Griffith
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program, People in America.
Each week we tell about someone important in the history of the United States. This
week we tell about astronaut Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly in
space.
MISSION CONTROL: "Three, two, one, zero ... liftoff!"
SHEPARD: "Roger, liftoff and the clock has started."
VOICE ONE:
The clock has started. With those words, Alan Shepard became the first American to
travel into space. He was in a small spacecraft called Freedom Seven. It was on top of
a huge rocket traveling at more than eight-thousand kilometers an hour.
Fifteen minutes later, Freedom Seven came down in the
Atlantic Ocean. Alan Shepard was a national hero. He had
won an important victory for the United States. The date
was May Fifth, Nineteen-Sixty-One. The United States
and the Soviet Union were in a tense competition for
world influence. And this competition was reaching even
into the cold darkness of space.
VOICE TWO:
In Nineteen-Fifty-Seven, the Soviet Union launched the first electronic satellite, Sputnik One. The United States
successfully launched its first spacecraft less than four months later. Now the two sides were racing to see who
could launch the first human space traveler.
On April Twelfth, Nineteen-Sixty-One, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin flew in space for one-hundred-eight
minutes. He circled the Earth once. The Soviets again were winning the "space race," but not for long. Three
weeks later the United States also put a man into space. He was a thirty-seven years old officer in the Navy --
Alan Shepard.
VOICE ONE:
Alan Bartlett Shepard, Junior, was born on November Eighteenth, Nineteen-Twenty-Three, in East Derry, New
Hampshire. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Nineteen-Forty-Four. He married soon after
his graduation. Then he served for a short time on a destroyer in the Pacific during World War Two.
In Nineteen-Forty-Seven, Alan Shepard became a pilot in the Navy. Later he became a test pilot. The life of a test
pilot can be very dangerous. It helped prepare Alan Shepard for an even greater danger in the future.
((MUSIC BRIDGE))
VOICE TWO:
The successes that the Soviet Union had with its Sputnik program caused the United States to speed up its plans
for a space program. The Americans decided to launch a satellite as soon as possible. The first attempt failed. The
rocket exploded during launch.
Support was growing, in Congress and among scientists, for a United States civilian space agency. Soon,
Congress passed a bill creating NASA -- the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. President
Eisenhower signed the bill into law. NASA's job was to be scientific space exploration. Its major goal was
sending the first Americans into space.
Within three months, the program had a name: Project Mercury. Mercury was the speedy messenger of the Greek
gods. While engineers built the spacecraft, NASA looked for men to fly them.
NASA wanted military test pilots because they test fly new planes. Test pilots are trained to think quickly in
dangerous situations. On April Seventh, Nineteen-Fifty-Nine, the space agency announced the seven Mercury
astronauts. They would be the first American space travelers. Alan Shepard was one. The others were Scott
Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Walter Schirra and Donald Slayton.
VOICE ONE:
Nine months after the project started, NASA made its first test flight of the Mercury spacecraft from Cape
Canaveral, Florida. In the next two years many other tests followed, all without astronauts.
The final test flight was at the end of January, Nineteen-Sixty-One. It carried a chimpanzee named Ham on a
seven-hundred-kilometer flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Several problems developed. But Ham survived the
launch and the landing in the ocean. Later, Alan Shepard often was asked how he became the first human
American to fly in space. "They ran out of monkeys," he joked.
VOICE TWO:
There were some concerns about the safety of the huge Redstone rocket that was to carry the spacecraft. The
launch had been delayed several times while more testswere done. By the time the rocket was ready for launch,
Yuri Gagarin had already gone into space for the Soviet Union.
The choice of Alan Shepard to be the first American to fly in space was announced just a few days before the
launch. Flights planned for May Second and May Fourth had to be halted because of bad weather.
On May Fifth, Nineteen-Sixty-One, a Friday, Alan Shepard struggled once again into his Mercury capsule. The
vehicle was named Freedom Seven. There was almost no room to move. Shepard waited inside for four hours.
Weather was partly the cause of the delay. There were clouds that would prevent filming the launch. Also some
last-minute repairs had to be made to his radio.
Shepard was tired of waiting. So he told the ground crew to hurry to solve the problems and fire the rocket.
Finally, they did.
VOICE ONE:
The rocket slowly began climbing. Millions of radio listeners heard a voice from the Cape Canaveral control
room say, "This is it Alan Shepard, there's no turning back. Good luck from all of us here at the Cape."
The rocket rose higher and higher. For five minutes Alan Shepard felt the weightlessness of space. He felt
himself floating. Freedom Seven flew one-hundred-eighty-five kilometers high. Then it re-entered the
atmosphere and the spacecraft slowed. The fifteen-minute flight ended with a soft splash into the ocean about
five-hundred kilometers from Cape Canaveral.
Alan Shepard reported, "Everything is A-Okay." A helicopter pulled him from the spacecraft and carried him to a
waiting ship.
((MUSIC BRIDGE))
VOICE TWO:
The flight was a complete success. Three weeks later President John F. Kennedy declared a new goal for the
United States. He called for "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the
Nineteen-Sixties.
In July of Nineteen-Sixty-Nine that came true. Alan Shepard was not on that first Apollo
moon flight . In fact, he almost never made it to the moon. He developed a disorder in his
inner-ear. It kept him from spaceflight for a number of years. Finally, an operation cured his
problem. NASA named Shepard to command Apollo Fourteen. The flight was launched at
the end of January Nineteen-Seventy-One. Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell were the other
members of the crew.
Roosa orbited the moon while Shepard and Mitchell landed on the surface. They collected
rocks and soil. Shepard also did something else. He played golf. He hit two small golf balls.
It was not easy. Shepard was dressed in a big spacesuit. He described his difficulty to
Mission Control in Houston.
When Shepard did hit the golf balls, they traveled "for miles and miles," as he reported, because the gravity on
the moon is one-sixth of the gravity on Earth.
VOICE ONE:
The only humans to walk on the moon were in the Apollo space flight program. Twelve American astronauts
walked on the moon between Nineteen-Sixty-Nine and Nineteen-Seventy-Two. Alan Shepard was the fifth one.
In Nineteen-Seventy-Four, he retired from NASA and the Navy. Shepard became chairman of a building
company in Houston, Texas. Later he began his own company, called Seven Fourteen Enterprises. It was named
for his flights on Freedom Seven and Apollo Fourteen.
He also wrote a book with astronaut "Deke" Slayton about his experiences. The book is called "Moon Shot." And
he led a group raising college money for science and engineering students.
VOICE TWO:
Alan Shepard died on July Twenty-first, Nineteen-Ninety-Eight after a two-year fight with the blood disease
leukemia. He was seventy-four years old. He had been married to his wife, Louise, for fifty-three years.
Alan Shepard was the first American to fly in space. He rode into the sky on rocket fuel and the hopes and
dreams of a nation. He will always be remembered as an American hero because of those fifteen minutes in
space.
((THEME))
VOICE ONE:
This Special English program was written by Avi Arditti and produced by Lawan Davis. This is Shirley Griffith.
VOICE TWO:
And this is Steve Ember. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICA program on the Voice of
America.
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