In the Shadow of the Moon (2007)

Alan Bean: Self

Quotes 

• Alan Bean : I thought I had the best job in the world, from the day I entered flight training, until I looked on TV one day and Al Shepard goes up in a rocket. He's gone higher than I've ever gone, and faster than I've ever gone, and most importantly, he's made more noise doing it. He's even on TV doing it. How do I get that job?

• Alan Bean : When Tom Wolfe wrote "The Right Stuff," I thought, boy, that sounds good. People are gonna think I have the right stuff. I'm the same guy I always was, but now I've got the right stuff!

  Harrison Schmitt : It's sort of an unshakeable belief in your own infallibility. That's what the right stuff is. That you're immortal, that you can do anything that is thrown at you.

• Alan Bean : One thing I know about Buzz, he's one of these guys that's a lot smarter than most of us. He had a nickname, Dr. Rendezvous.

  Michael Collins : He loves to talk about technical stuff, particularly rendezvous. I mean, he'll get this orbit going this way, and that orbit going the other way, and he really grooved on those things.

  Alan Bean : You didn't want to sit near him at a party, because he would start talking about rendezvous, and you would want to be talking about the good-looking girl across the room. He could care less. He wanted to talk about rendezvous, and he'd been talking to you about it all week long.

• Alan Bean : I always thought of myself as one of the more fearful astronauts, really. And when I'd look out the window of the spacecraft, I would think, if that window blows out, I'm gonna die in about a second. There's death right out there about an inch away.

• Alan Bean : When you land on the Moon, and you stop, and you get out, nobody's out there. This little LM, and then two of you, you're it. On this whole big place. And that's a weird feeling. It's a weird feeling to be... two people, and that's it.

• Alan Bean : Now, I pick up the phone. And he said "Who's this?" and I told him "Alan Bean". He said "Well, we're down here and we're doin' this test, and we've lost the crew." And I said "Wh-where'd they go? You lost 'em?" 'Cause I thought they just need to run the test, and they can't find 'em. "No," they said, "we've lost the crew." I said "Maybe they're down at the beach house." And they said "No, there was a fire." And then it dawns on me that maybe they're talkin' about somethin' diff'rent than I think.

• Charlie Duke : Reentry is very critical in Apollo. The last time I looked at my computer, we were accelerating through 39,000 feet per second, which is, uh, translates to over 26,000 miles an hour.

  Alan Bean : A rifle bullet only goes 2,000 miles an hour.

  Michael Collins : You, you are literally on fire. Your, uh, your heat shield is on fire, and it's streaming, its fragments are streaming out behind you. It's like being inside a gigantic lightbulb.

  Charlie Duke : The reentry started at 400,000 feet, and by the time you got to 90,000 feet you're basically comin' straight down, free-fall.

• [last lines] 

  Alan Bean : I feel blessed *every* *single* *day*. Not a day goes by that I don't think, this is great, this was wonderful, somebody had to go, and they happened to pick me. So it was great.