Nevin's Data "Points"

While I am sure there was a period in my youth when I wanted to be a fireman, a cowboy, or maybe even a professional athlete, my earliest memories are of wanting to be an astronaut. Never mind that my odds of becoming a professional athlete were considerably better than those of joining the nation’s elite group of astronauts. It was evident even to me early on that I lacked the athletic acumen for a career in sports—it took years for me to appreciate what would have been required for me to satisfy NASA’s requirements (and be able to rationalize that the “real” reason was that I was too tall). It was a magical time for our nation’s space program. There was a plan, three separate programs (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo) to help us get there, and a vision—as President John F. Kennedy said in May 1961, of “achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” There was also a sense of national urgency (the so-called “Space Race...