Unlike Gagarin's 108-minute orbital flight in a Vostok spacecraft three times the size of "Freedom 7", Shepard stayed on a suborbital trajectory for the 15-minute flight, which reached an altitude of , and then fell to a splashdown down the Atlantic Missile Range. Unlike Gagarin, whose flight was strictly automatic, Shepard had some control of "Freedom 7", spacecraft attitude in particular. Shepard's launch was seen live on television by millions. It was launched atop a Redstone rocket. According to Gene Kranz in his 2000 book "Failure Is Not an Option", "When reporters asked Shepard what he thought about as he sat atop the Redstone rocket, waiting for liftoff, he had replied, 'The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder.'"