If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.

You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.

If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.

At 42,000' in approximately level flight, a third cylinder was turned on. Acceleration was rapid and speed increased to .98 Mach. The needle of the machmeter fluctuated at this reading momentarily, then passed off the scale. Assuming that the off-scale reading remained linear, it is estimated that 1.05 Mach was attained at this time.

The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day.

I ran the astronaut school for six years, and I was the commandant and when I finished in '65, 26 of my guys went into space as NASA astronauts that I trained.

Everybody that I've ever seen that enjoyed their job was very good at it.