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, even then, 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 – but 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 n...