NEARLY a decade ago, a slim, crew-cut Navy test pilot clambered into a tiny space capsule named Freedom 7 and was hurled by a Redstone rocket into a high, arcing 302-mile flight over the Atlantic. For the U.S., that brief, 15-min-ute suborbital ride began the era of manned space flight. Next week, his lean body practically unchanged by the passage of years, the same pioneering astronaut will command NASA's fourth manned assault on the moon. At the age of 47, Captain Alan B. Shepard Jr. is the oldest American* ever to soar into space, the only one of the original Mercury...
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