Time for Privacy
Even after the space race had made him famous, von Braun continued to list his home telephone number in the Huntsville directory. That is, until late one New Year's Eve, when a drunk called him up an requested "a ticket to the moon, Doctor."
Von Braun promptly got an unlisted number.

Straight Talk
At a Project Mercury press conference a reporter asked what might result if the retro rockets used to slow the spacecraft failed to fire. Was there any method of rescue?
Replied James Dempsey of General Dynamics Astronautics: "I would send for a priest."

Unwise Crack
Before the flight, Grissom had named his spacecraft Liberty Bell 7. To make the bell-shaped capsule look more like the real article, engineers preparing the craft painted a "crack" on its side. Later, after the capsule sank, they joked that it was the last time they would ever launch one with a crack in it.

Mr. Clean
Glenn, whose space flight was postponed a total of ten times before liftoff finally came, became known as the cleanest astronaut in the world because he had been "scrubbed" so often.

Taking No Chances
Astronaut Cooper had visited an aerospace plant at San Diego for the ceremonial rollout of the Atlas rocket that was to loft his Mercury capsule to the orbit. Taking a felt-tip pen, he drew an arrow on the side of the rocket pointing toward its nose and wrote this instruction:
Launch this way.
- G. Cooper, pilot

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