Got More Dirt Than Ball. Here We

I Woke Up An Hour Before I Was Supposed To, And Started Going Over The Mental Checklist: Where Do I Go From Here, What Do I Do? I Don't Remember Eating Anything At All, Just Going Through The Physical, Getting Into The Suit. We Practiced That So Much, It Was All Rote.

Obviously I Was Challenged By Becoming A Naval Aviator, By Landing Aboard Aircraft Carriers And So On.

The First Plane Ride Was In A Homemade Glider My Buddy And I Built. Unfortunately We Didn't Get More Than Four Feet Off The Ground, Because It Crashed.

We Wanted To Be In Great Shape, We Wanted To Be Able To Cope With Zero Gravity, We Wanted To Be Able To Cope With Accelerations And Decelerations And So On. So All Of Us Trained So That We Were Probably In The Best Physical Condition We Had Ever Been In Up Until That Point.

I Realized Up There That Our Planet Is Not Infinite. It's Fragile. That May Not Be Obvious To A Lot Of Folks, And It's Tough That People Are Fighting Each Other Here On Earth Instead Of Trying To Get Together And Live On This Planet. We Look Pretty Vulnerable In The Darkness Of Space.