Word: sheparded
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...that brief, 15-min-ute suborbital ride began the era of manned space flight. Next week, his lean body practically unchanged by the passage of years, the same pioneering astronaut will command NASA's fourth manned assault on the moon. At the age of 47, Captain Alan B. Shepard Jr. is the oldest American* ever to soar into space, the only one of the original Mercury astronauts still on flight status and clearly one of the comeback heroes of all time. In 1963, after he had been selected to pilot one of the early Gemini flights, Shepard was dropped...
...comfortable middle age, should Shepard have even attempted a comeback? His place in history is secure; his life in Texas seems light-years away from the moon. A self-made millionaire (banking, real estate and other shrewd investments), he lives with his handsome wife Louise and daughter (his other daughter is married) in a pillared $150,000 house in the exclusive River Oaks section and hobnobs with Houston's social elite. He owns two cars (a Corvette and a Cadillac) and likes few things better than to water-ski in the wake of his 17-ft. power boat...
...reputation as a swinging Texas jet-setter, there is another dimension to Shepard, a dedication to flying that became apparent even before he finished Navy flight school. Impatient with service caution, he got himself a private pilot's license from civilian instructors before he won his Navy wings. Says Shepard: "I would fly anything that I could fit into...
...Shepard should fit very well into Apollo 14's command seat. His ear now seems in excellent shape. "I still have a muted ringing in it, like a dog whistle," he says, "but I hardly notice it." He has also apparently mastered, in spite of initial difficulties, the split-second control techniques of the tricky lunar lander. Indeed, his confidence should help bolster all of NASA at a critical moment in its history. "I suppose," muses Shepard, "if we don't make it back to earth, somebody will say the poor son of a bitch wasn...
...When he flew Soyuz 3 in 1968, Russian Cosmonaut Georgy Beregovoy, also 47, was 3½ months older than Shepard...