Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth: Back in the early days, the stress was always on just flying this thing, getting it back and doing whatever research you could. On my flight, one of my experiments was to read a miniature eye chart every 20 minutes to see if my eyes would change shappe because of the lack of gravity. Now everything’s gotten so much bigger. We’ve turned space into a new laboratory–in our lifetimes. It’s opened a whole new vista on what we can do in immunology, biotechnology and many branches of science. Americans will benefit tremendously from Shannon Lucid’s trip. And it’s great encouragement for women and girls interested in the space program. Her ability to do a superb job shows that spaceflights can be done by women just as well as by men.
Navy Cmdr. Scott Carpenter, the second American to orbit the Earth: There is always a battle in this business between the science and the engineering, between the people who want to experiment on the human organism and on perfecting the spacecrafts themselves. NASA decided, rightfully so, that if we are going to do meaningful science in flight, we are better advised to take trained scientists and teach them to fly than to take pilots and teach them science. Test pilots are members of a more heroic society than Ph.D. physicists, and heroes give the enterprise a certain mystique and glory it needs for funding. But in a well-rounded space-exploration program, you can have both. Everybody who does this, from the first astronauts to the present, is motivated by their own kind of curiosity. These people are every bit as dedicated as anybody else.
Col. Richard Mullane, a veteran of three shuttle missions and Lucid’s 1978 astronaut-training classmate: There has been a change in astronaut mystique over the years. If you read ““The Right Stuff’’ characterization of the early astronauts, they were loners. That aloof, arrogant character doesn’t fit with what we do now. These projects are so expensive and require such international participation that you want to have people who are team players–men, women, minorities. The ““Right Stuff’’ nowadays is being able to thrive in situations a lot of us couldn’t have imagined–like six months on a space station with two Russians.
Col. Frank Borman, com- mander of Apollo 8, the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon: The major emphasis we had in the Apollo program was the cold war. It was a battle, just like Vietnam. We went forward because we were in competition with the Russians. That doesn’t exist today. It’s much more difficult to fund research programs than political ones. Remember the kids’ experiments [when astronauts conducted schoolchildren’s experiments aboard the shuttle]? The thoughtful person shook his head and said, ““Wow, is this worth all that money?’’ Shannon Lucid is good for NASA. There should be less of a problem now. You are going to want to do all the science you can. She’s an astronaut. That’s a far better way to engender good publicity than flying senators or schoolteachers. I hope and pray that we keep pressing on.
