The LuLac Edition #4,512, May 5th, 2021

 FREEDOM 7 @ 60

60 years ago today…..The first American went into space. Alan Shepard of the U.S. Navy and one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts lifted off at Cape Canaveral in Florida. It was a short, sub orbital flight (primitive by today’s standards) but those 15 minutes excited a nation.  On January 19, 1961, Robert R. Gilruth, the director of NASA's Space Task Group, informed the seven astronauts that Shepard had been chosen for the first American crewed mission into space. Shepard piloted the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission and his spacecraft,  Freedom 7 into history.

Shepard later got to the moon as Commander of Apollo 14 from January 31 to February 9, 1971, ten years after his first flight.  It was America's third successful lunar landing and, at the age of 47, he was the oldest man to walk on the Moon, plus the only one of the Mercury Seven astronauts to do so.

He also golfed on the moon striking two golf balls, driving the second, as he jokingly put it, "miles and miles and miles. “