A Man With the Right Stuff
For those of you who weren’t around on May 5, 1961, some context is required to understand what astronaut Alan Shepard’s brief space flight that day meant to Americans.
That was the time of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union was widely and properly perceived as winning the space race. Nearly four years earlier, the Soviets announced they had developed an intercontinental ballistic missile. Two months later they launched Sputnik, the first satellite, into space and then sent a dog into orbit. The climax came in April 1961 when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth.
Shepard’s blast into the beyond reached an altitude only slightly more than half of Gagarin’s orbit and he was in space just five minutes during a 15-minute flight. Nevertheless, the mission was a tremendous psychological boost to a nation worried about bullying by the Soviet Union amid its Space Age breakthroughs. Almost every American with access to a radio or television was glued to the set in fascination and pride during those few minutes.
“Just the first baby step, aiming for bigger and better things,†Shepard said with the brashness common among the test-pilots-turned-astronauts who rode the manned space program to fame in the early days.
Shepard, who died Tuesday at 74, eventually walked on the moon, becoming the fifth man there and the only one ever to take a six iron along and whack a golf ball across its surface. As the first American in outer space, he will always hold a special place in the history of technological achievement.
