I will have a one-hour program called the Mission Watch, where I will describe details of the mission and give additional information about the lessons from space.

My sympathies have always been for working-class people.

I have the LIFE magazine of the men walking on the moon.

Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space.

The president felt that it was important to send an ordinary citizen to experience the excitement of space travel as a representative for all Americans.

I told them how excited I would be to go into space and how thrilled I was when Alan Shepard made his historic flight, and when John Kennedy announced on the news that the men had landed safely on the moon, and how jealous I was of those men.

If anything, the overriding emotion is gonna just be excitement.