Selection of crews is always been somewhat of a mystery.

quote by Robert Crippen
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The nature of the shuttle was, we couldn't put a crew escape system in it.

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You're going very fast when you're on orbit, going around the world once every hour and a half.

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We were only on orbit a little over two days, so we had no adverse effects from being weightless.

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Looking down at the Earth, you started to pick up a sense of speed much more than I had noticed on orbit.

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If you want to go into space first time on a new vehicle that's never been flown, you want to go with a pro.

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Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.

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When you work really hard for something for a long time it's almost impossible to believe that it's coming true.

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We were flying on a winged vehicle that would do reentry different than we had ever done before. So all of those were firsts. Test pilots truly love firsts.

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Living inside the shuttle was a little like camping out. We ended up sleeping in our seats. You had to pay attention to housekeeping, not get things too dirty.

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