We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.

Virgil Ivan Grissom (3 April 1926 – 27 January 1967), more widely known as Gus Grissom, was one of the original NASA Project Mercury astronauts and a United States Air Force pilot. He was the second American to fly into space. Grissom was killed along with fellow astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee during a training exercise and pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission at the Kennedy Space Center. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and, posthumously, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Quotes

  • If we die we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis, only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men.
    • On the dangers and importance of the mission of going to the moon in "Gemini : A Personal Account of Man's Venture Into Space (1968) by Virgil I. Grissom
  • Do good work.
    • The entirety of a speech given by Grissom to the employees of General Dynamics, builders of the Atlas rocket. (Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, Neal Thompson, 2007, p. 239)


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