So did being an early astronaut. Nobody knew what was going to happen when they lit off those early Mercury rockets.
It must have been great watching those early missions. The Space Shuttle was flying before I was born so space flight has been so mundane my entire life. But I always enjoyed reading about the space race. I loved that series on Apollo when it was on HBO and have seen Apollo 13 umpteen times.
All the early astronauts and cosmonauts were a different breed than the ones today. Very different.
I remember when American Astronauts, while in orbit around the earth, proceeded to read aloud verses from the Bible over TV broadcasts.
This so infuriated the atheists at the time that they demanded “equal time”. “Sure!” they were told. “Just come on up!”