To Boldly Go
In 1959 the United States selected the first seven of the pilots it called "astronauts"--who would fly higher and faster than anyone before them. This was in response to the unspoken challenge presented by the Soviet Union when it launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, and the space race was on. Cernan, already a Navy pilot, was "fascinated," as he put it in his 1999 book, The Last Man on the Moon. "I had joined the Navy to fly, and the idea of riding a rocket ship into space had instant appeal. A new dream formed inside my crew-cut head."
The opportunity Cernan had been waiting for dropped into his lap in 1963 in the form of a telephone call from a high ranking Navy officer asking if he would like to be considered as an astronaut for Apollo--the U.S. space program whose goal was to land a man on the moon. "There was a moment of silence on my end," Cernan recalled in his book, "while my heart jumped into my throat. I hadn't even applied. Last time I looked, I wasn't even qualified. But this guy was saying the Navy was recommending me to NASA for astronaut training.
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