90 HISTORY Ol 'III! COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



practice of hiding failures and never announcing a space success until 

 after it had been achieved. 



At 1:30 a.m.. Mav 5. Alan Shepard was awakened and started 

 the long series of preparations necessary prior to his historic flight 

 after daybreak By that time, most of the committee members had 

 bedded down, awaiting the predawn phone call alerting them for 

 their bus trip out to the Cape. Not all members of the committee could 

 sleep, however. 



At 2:30 a.m., the telephone jangle awoke one of the members of 

 the committee He was deeply chagrined and embarrassed when the 

 voice on the phone gruffly proclaimed: 



This is Tiger Teague. The whole crew is getting on the bus, and we've been 

 waiting for vim for 10 minutes. Get your tail down to the lobby right away or you'll 

 be left behind! 



Three minutes later, an unshaven, dishevelled Congressman breath- 

 lessly asked a sleepy-eyed desk clerk: "Where is everybody?" — only 

 to learn that the wake-up calls would not be made until 5 a.m. 



Out at the Cape, the committee members watched closely as final 

 checks were made at Mercury Control. NASA Administrator Webb 

 was visibly nervous. Teague recalls Webb had three statements ready; 

 one if the flight succeeded, one if Shepard had to be ejected in case of 

 malfunction, and a third in case the astronaut was killed. One of the 

 members, standing next to Bill Hines of the Washington Evening 

 Star, heard him report over a live telephone line to his paper: 



Two, one, zero, ignition! 

 There it goes!! 



This is the moment, the first time an American has entrusted his life to one of 

 these things. I am covering this story, but God help this man. 



Shepard 's flight, viewed by millions live on television, was an 

 unqualified success. His wife, Louise, remarked: "This is just a baby 

 step, I guess, for what we will see." 



Back in Washington, many officials were frantically putting to- 

 gether the final report which Vice President Johnson had ordered 

 three days after the successful Shepard flight. It was their respon- 

 sibility to project that baby step into a giant stride. 



After Shepard addressed a joint meeting of Congress on May 8, 

 Johnson was handed the final memorandum which he took to President 

 Kennedy without change. The memorandum began: "It is man, not 

 merely machines, in space that captures the imagination of the world." 

 In the ensuing time frame, President Kennedy polished the historic 

 declaration which he was to make to the Congress on May 25. 



The day before President Kennedy appeared before the joint session 

 of Congress to announce the goal of a lunar landing, the Science and 



