I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.

You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up.

I was always afraid of dying. Always. It was my fear that made me learn everything I could about my airplane and my emergency equipment, and kept me flying respectful of my machine and always alert in the cockpit.

I have no regrets about my life. People ask, "If you had to do it all over again, would you do it differently?" No. That's speculation.

Hey Ridley, that Machometer is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me.

In 1966, NASA took over in space, and it has been a bureaucratic mess ever since.

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