I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.

Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we're here.

You know, being a test pilot isn't always the healthiest business in the world.

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.

We worked with the engineers in the design and construction and testing phases in those various areas, then we would get back together at the end of the week and brief each other as to what had gone on.

I think the sense of family and family achievement, plus the discipline which I received there from that one-room school were really very helpful in what I did later on.

And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.