As a former Astronaut with a lot of experience within both the intelligence and health care communities, I'm considering becoming more active in politics. Having decades of first hand knowledge I think it's safe for me to say our country is headed in the wrong direction. Finding nuclear power sources for small portable high output electronic motors is also a cause which is very near and dear to my heart.
I'm not sure if there's a party I'd want to belong to. See the thing is about astronauts, we're not very interesting people. They pre-screen us for that. That was the deal with Armstrong. Can you imagine if the guy had come back and started getting all biblical? Seriously... picture it... The cameras are pointing at the sky... the space capsule and its three parachutes appear. Splashdown! The helicopters retrieve it from the ocean, and fly the Apollo crew to the deck of a waiting air craft carrier. Then on the landing deck, instead of politely filing towards the debriefing area and just waving at the news cameras as he goes, what if Armstrong had walked right up to the press, grabbed a mic, looked straight into the cameras and declared: "People of the earth I've been to the heavens... and I've spoken to God Almighty!!! I have returned to the earth to lead you all!!! Cast off your bonds!!! Forget your national leaders and Follow me!!!"
See, to be certain of avoiding situations like that, they go out of their way at NASA to make sure they wind up with guys like me. They give us lots of psych tests to be sure that if they tell us to put a square peg in a round hole we'll just say "how high SIR!". It's not such a bad thing because... really, you know when you are hurtling through space in a tin foil nozzle at 2,000 mph in the middle of a void, they don't really want you having too much of an imagination.
That's what got me through my own accident. My lack of imagination. People tell me to do things and I go do em. I get em done. But now that I've been out of the game a while I feel like maybe I should have done some things differently?
I don't know. See the thing is I don't really know how to think for myself.
Wish I did.