Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business.

He was also project test pilot on the F5D Skylancer and his last five months at Patuxent were spent as an instructor in the Test Pilot School. Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr.

He was promoted from Captain to Rear Admiral on August 25 1971. During the mission he hit two golf balls on the lunar surface. This Mercury flight was designed to enter space but not to achieve orbit.