Capsule Quotes (7 quotes)
I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts—all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
His reply to the question, often asked, “When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?” From speech announcing his Senate retirement (20 Feb 1997). As recorded in 'A Genuine American Hero Says He'll Retire', Tributes Delivered in Congress: John Glenn (1998) in U.S. Government Printing Office, U.S. Congress: Senate, Vol 105, Issue 34, 52. (A similar reference to “the lowest bidder on a government contract” has also been attributed to Alan Shepard.)
I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure.
Letter to Stanley Hart White (Jan 1929), collected in The Letters of E.B. White (1976, 1989), 85.
I still find it hard to believe how far we have come, from the time I first flew on Friendship 7 and the Discovery flight. I go from being crammed into a capsule the size of a telephone booth to a place where I could live and work in space. … Amazing.
As quoted by Howard Wilkinson in 'John Glenn Had the Stuff U.S. Heroes are Made of', The Cincinnati Enquirer (20 Feb 2002).
One of our joys was to go into our workroom at night; we then perceived on all sides the feebly luminous silhouettes of the bottles or capsules containing our products. It was really a lovely sight and one always new to us. The glowing tubes looked like faint, fairy lights.
As translated by Charlotte and Vernon Kellogg in Marie Curie, Pierre Curie (1923), 188.
The attempt of the engineers and the doctors who have worked on the design of the capsule interior has been to give the impression, to create the fact, of roominess in a confined space.
Describing the Mercury capsule in Life (14 Sep 1959), 38.
We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like.
…...
Zero-g and I feel fine. Capsule is turning around. … Oh, that view is tremendous!
From the transcript of in-flight communications, 5 min 12 sec after launch, about his view through the porthole.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
