R.I.P. Mr Neil Armstrong

[efliernz]

www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/7549902/Neil-Armstrong-first-man-on-the-moon-dies

SAD DAY FOR MANKIND: Neil Armstrong, the commander of Apollo 11 and the first man to step on the moon, has died, aged 82.



I was one when they landed on the moon. Mum says she sat my twin sister and I down and explained (knowing Mum a 30 minute explanation!) how awesome this was.

Pete

[spongebob206]

Sad day, great man RIP

[TS]

R.I.P. to a great man who has been so inspirational to young and old!!

I can remember sitting at primary school listening to the landing on the school radio. It was a lovely sunny day I could see the moon while I sat outside having lunch and was in orr that right at that time there was a human being walking on the surface of the moon absolutely BRILLIANT....

Aim for the stars now Neil !!

[phil82]

There have been over the centuries, some truly great explorers, but for me the first man to step on the moon was one of the bravest. So much could have gone wrong, yet he accepted the odds and went anyway.I can recall the very moment because the whole world was clustered around a radio somewhere, me in Air Staff in Wellington, listening to those magic words: "The Eagle has landed" , then seeing the grainy TV film of his first step, then him saluting the American Flag. Hell, why wouldn’t you! Looking up at the moon that night as if by some miracle you could see them, but knowing they were there and marveling at the achievement.

In 1969 there were no satellites beaming pictures around the world, and in NZ we sent a Canberra, then the fastest aircraft available, to Australia to collect a film so that we could watch the event.

[baz62]

Aug 26, 2012 10:10:56 GMT 12 TS said:

I can remember sitting at primary school listening to the landing on the school radio.

Yes me too! We were all sitting there with balls of Plasticine making "Moons". Would have been Standard 3 I think.
Yes very sad, I read his autobiography (or biography?) and was impressed by what he went through to get to the moon and his career afterwards and into retirement.
RIP Mr Armstrong

[Dave Homewood]

A really sad loss. May he rest in peace.

Only yesterday my mate and I watched BBC's Space Race about the race to the moon on BBC Knowledge.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Neil Armstrong, first person to walk on moon, dies at 82

Neil Armstrong's ‘giant leap for mankind’ as he set foot on the lunar surface in 1969
climaxed a monumental achievement in human history. Despite his fame, the former
fighter pilot shrank from the spotlight and called himself a ‘nerdy engineer’.

By ERIC MALNIC | 2:17PM - Saturday, August 25, 2012


Neil Armstrong inside the Apollo 11 lunar module after his historic walk on the surface of the moon.
— Photo: NASA/August 25, 2012.

• PHOTOS: Neil Armstrong dead at 82

• PHOTOS: Apollo 11 mission

NEIL ARMSTRONG, the U.S. astronaut who was the first person to set foot on the moon, firmly establishing him as one of the great heroes of the 20th century, has died. He was 82.

Armstrong died following complications from cardiovascular procedures, his family announced Saturday.

When he made that famous step on July 20, 1969, he uttered a phrase that has been carved in stone and quoted across the planet: "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

Armstrong spoke those words quietly as he gazed down at his, the first human footprint on the surface of the moon. In the excitement of the moment, the "a" was left out — either because Armstrong omitted it or because it was lost in the static of the radio transmission back to Earth.

For the usually taciturn Armstrong, it was a rare burst of eloquence seen and heard by 60 million television viewers worldwide. But Armstrong, a reticent, self-effacing man who shunned the spotlight, was never comfortable with his public image as a courageous, historic man of action.

"I am, and ever will be, a white-sock, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer," Armstrong once told a National Press Club gathering.

Perhaps.

How many other nerdy engineers flew 78 combat missions as a Navy jet fighter pilot during the Korean War? Logged more than 1,000 hours as a test pilot in some of the world's fastest and most dangerous aircraft? Or became one of the first civilian astronauts and commanded Apollo 11, the first manned flight to land on the moon?

In the years that followed the flight of Apollo 11, Armstrong was asked again and again what it felt like to be the first man on the moon. In answering, he always shared the glory: "I was certainly aware that this was the culmination of the work of 300,000 to 400,000 people over a decade."

Neil Alden Armstrong was born August 5th, 1930, on his grandfather's farm near Wapakoneta, Ohio.

His father, Stephen Armstrong, was a civil servant who audited county records in Ohio and later served as assistant director of the Ohio Mental Hygiene and Corrections Department. The family of his mother, Viola, owned the farm.

For more than a decade, his family lived in a succession of Ohio cities to accommodate his father's job before settling down in Wapakoneta.

After his father bought him a ride in a Ford Trimotor transport plane in 1936, Armstrong rushed home and began building model airplanes and a wind tunnel to test them.

A good student, Armstrong was a much-decorated Boy Scout and played the baritone horn in a school band. But aviation always came first.

In 1945, he started taking flying lessons, paying for them by working as a stock clerk at a drugstore. On his 16th birthday, he got his pilot's license but didn't yet have a driver's license.

Upon graduating from high school in 1947, he was awarded a Navy scholarship to Purdue University. When the Korean War started in 1949, Armstrong was called to active duty.

After flight training, Armstrong was assigned to the carrier Essex, flying combat missions over North Korea. Although one of the Panther jets he flew off the carrier was crippled by enemy fire, he nursed the plane back over South Korea before bailing out safely. Recognized as an outstanding pilot with a flair for leadership, he received three Air Medals before finishing his active duty in 1952.

He returned to Purdue and earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955.

Within months, he was a civilian test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He was soon stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, chronicled by author Tom Wolfe as the home to pilots with "The Right Stuff."

Aviators were closely scrutinized there, evaluated carefully as they pushed high-performance aircraft to "the edge of the envelope" and quizzed repeatedly about the scientific implications of their work.

"A lot of people couldn't figure Armstrong out," Wolfe wrote. "You'd ask him a question and he would just stare at you with those pale blue eyes of his.

"And you'd start to ask the question again, figuring that he hadn't understood, and — click — out of his mouth would come forth a sequence of long, quiet, perfectly formed, precisely thought-out sentences, full of anisotropic functions and multiple-encounter trajectories or whatever else was called for.

"It was as if his hesitations were just data punch-in intervals for his computer."

Armstrong had dated a sorority beauty queen, Janet Shearon, at Purdue, and they were married in 1956. For a while they lived in a small shack without indoor plumbing in the San Gabriel Mountains overlooking Edwards.

Children soon followed. A son, Eric, in 1957 and a daughter, Karen, two years later. The couple had a second son, Mark, in 1963, a year after Karen died of a brain tumor. True to form, Armstrong did not speak publicly about the tragedy or any other aspects of his family life.

Instead, he concentrated on his work.

By 1963, NASA was striving to fulfill President John F. Kennedy's goal of beating the Soviet Union in the space race and putting an American on the moon. Kennedy wanted some civilian astronauts, and Armstrong was one of the first.

In 1966, he made his first space flight, with fellow astronaut David R. Scott. Their ship, Gemini 8, was docking with an unmanned Agena rocket when a malfunctioning thruster sent the interlocked space vehicles tumbling uncontrollably.

Unperturbed, Armstrong disconnected the two vehicles, brought Gemini 8 back under control and made a safe emergency landing in the Pacific. NASA officials cited his "extraordinary piloting skill."

Two years later, a lunar landing training vehicle he was piloting suffered control failure just 200 feet off the ground. Armstrong ejected, parachuting to safety.

On January 1st, 1969, he was named commander of Apollo 11, the first manned spaceship scheduled to land on the moon. His crewmates were fellow space veterans Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins.

Five months later, the massive Apollo 11 spaceship was nudged carefully onto the launch pad at what was then called Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The vehicle was as long as a football field, tipped on end. It consisted of the command module Columbia, which would carry the three astronauts on their 238,000-mile journey and in which Collins would orbit the moon; the lunar lander the Eagle, which would carry Armstrong and Collins down to the lunar surface; and a huge Saturn booster rocket to hurl the whole thing into space.

On July 16th, 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off. Two and a half hours later, after an orbit and a half around the Earth, onboard rockets fired to send the spaceship on its three-day trip to the moon.

Once in lunar orbit, Armstrong and Aldrin clambered into the Eagle and descended toward the lunar surface, leaving Collins to circle above them.

The landing wasn't easy. The lunar surface was rockier than expected, and Armstrong had to pilot the fragile craft horizontally until he found a safe, flat spot.

On July 20th, 1969, at 1:04:40 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, the small spacecraft came to rest gently near the moon's dry Sea of Tranquillity.

"The Eagle has landed," Armstrong radioed back to Earth.

At New York's Yankee Stadium, 16,000 fans stood up and cheered.

Six hours and 52 minutes later, as an onboard television camera sent grainy but stunning images back for the world to see, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on lunar soil.

There had been some dispute over who would be first, Armstrong or Aldrin, but Donald "Deke" Slayton, head of the astronaut corps, said he made the decision.

"Neil was the commander," Slayton once said. "He had the seniority, and that was all there was to it."

Aldrin stepped out of the Eagle a few minutes after Armstrong. The pair spent about 21/2 hours on the lunar surface, collecting dozens of soil and rock samples, setting up seismic equipment, planting an American flag and taking photographs.

"Isn't this fun?" the usually reserved Armstrong remarked jocularly at one point, patting Aldrin on the shoulder as they bounded about in the low lunar gravity.

As they climbed back into the Eagle, they left behind a plaque that reads: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon. We come in peace for all mankind."

Within hours, the Eagle had lifted off from the moon, rejoined the Columbia and the three astronauts were on their way back to Earth.

On July 24th, 1969, Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific about 950 miles south of Hawaii. To assure they weren't carrying any lunar organisms, the astronauts were placed in quarantine for 18 days. President Nixon waved to them through a window of their isolation chamber.

On August 13th, 1969, the nation saluted them. They appeared in a parade in New York City in the morning and another in Chicago in the afternoon. That night, they were honored by 1,400 at a state dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Nixon gave them each the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Then the trio left on a 22-nation tour, during which they met the queen of England, the shah of Iran and the pope.

The public adulation eventually dimmed for Aldrin and Collins — but not Armstrong. He was in demand, and whenever he made a public appearance people clamored for his autograph.

It all made him uncomfortable.

He worked a NASA desk job in Washington for a couple years and after earning a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at USC, he returned to Ohio. For a decade, he taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

He bought a secluded, 200-acre dairy farm near Lebanon, Ohio, and occasionally ventured into town for a quiet lunch at a local cafe. The town respected his privacy and he said he enjoyed doing the moderate physical work required on a farm.

When called by his country, he responded, serving in 1985 on the National Commission on Space and in 1986 as vice chairman of the presidential commission that investigated the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

He continued to fly, piloting a light plane he kept at a nearby airport. He served on the boards of several large corporations, and as chairman of AIL Technologies, an aerospace electronics firm on Long Island, New York.

He even surprised everyone and did a television commercial for Chrysler.

In 1994, Armstrong divorced his wife of 38 years. Shortly afterward, he married the former Carol Knight, a woman 15 years his junior, and receded further from public life.

The closest he came to describing what the Apollo 11 mission meant to him was during a Life magazine interview several weeks before the flight.

"The single thing which makes any man happiest is the realization that he has worked up to the limits of his ability, his capacity," Armstrong said. "It's all the better, of course, if this work has made a contribution to knowledge, or toward moving the human race a little farther forward."

Information on survivors was not immediately available.

• Malnic, a former Times staff writer, prepared a draft of this story before he died in 2010

www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-neil-armstrong-20120826,735,911920,full.story

[kiwithrottlejockey]

I was eating breakfast before heading off to school when the Apollo 11 lunar module landed on the surface of the moon. Later that day, I was sitting in a 5th Form (year 11 these days) science class when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of the lunar lander and onto the surface of the moon. Needless to say, there was no school-work being done in any of the classrooms that day....everybody (pupils and teachers) were glued to numerous radios listening to monumental history being made.

[baronbeeza]

Aug 26, 2012 12:52:52 GMT 12 kiwithrottlejockey said:

Needless to say, there was no school-work being done in any of the classrooms that day....everybody (pupils and teachers) were glued to numerous radios listening to monumental history being made.

I am wondering if we went to the same school. I was in geography class, - still like to think I remember it clearly.

Strange to think that Vietnam was really ramping up at the same time, we were just used to the news back from that theatre.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Aug 26, 2012 13:32:30 GMT 12 baronbeeza said:

I am wondering if we went to the same school. I was in geography class, - still like to think I remember it clearly.

Strange to think that Vietnam was really ramping up at the same time, we were just used to the news back from that theatre.

I was at Karamu High School in Hastings.


It's interesting that the Los Angeles Times had prepared a draft of their news story about Neil Armstrong's death two years ago in 2010.

I wonder how many other draft, prepared obituary news stories are being sat on by news media organisations, waiting for the day when the people they are written about die, then they are presumably pulled out and updated, then published.

[Dave Homewood]

"It's interesting that the Los Angeles Times had prepared a draft of their news story about Neil Armstrong's death two years ago in 2010."

Most news agencies have obituaries pre-prepared of very famous people so all they need to do is place a date and circumstance on it and put it out, rather than waste time doing it all after the event when people are waiting to hear the news. You may recall that the Queen Mother's obituary was published accidentally on several occasions before she actually died because of this.

[obiwan27]

Sad news. At least this is one Armstrong who could hold his head up high with what he'd achieved in his life. RIP.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

I can still vividly remember the radio stations thrashing that song during the Apollo 11 mission.

[ngatimozart]

May he RIP. He was truly a brave explorer. I too was at school (Form 2) and the whole school wasin the theatrette listening to it on the radio and that night, like a lot of other people, after seeing it on the tv news went outside and looked up at the moon with two men standing on it and a third orbiting it. Something I'll never forget. I followed the space program very closely as a kid.

[Peter Lewis]

I was working night shifts at the time of the landing.

That morning I was in the Te Atatu South Foodtown, and they had the audio feed live through the supermarket's sound system

Whenever I drive past there I remember.

[flyjoe180]

I shop there every week , did not realise it was that old! RIP Neil Armstrong, your legacy lives on.

[starr]

My wife was in Middlemore Hospital awaiting the arrival of our first child, (a daughter). She and others in the same ward listened to the whole proceedings on the radio. At that time I was in Rotorua doing my topdressing training with Bob Scott. Certainly a lot has happened since then, but nothing like the achievement of Neil and the others with him.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

[kiwithrottlejockey]

From the Los Angeles Times....

Armstrong: a never-read eulogy recalls danger of his feat

By LAURA J. NELSON | 5:40AM - Sunday, August 26, 2012


The Apollo 11 crew — from left, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin — conduct
an equipment check in their command module. — Photo: MCT/August 26, 2012.

TWO DAYS before Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, speechwriter William Safire sent 12 sentences to President Nixon’s chief of staff.

The title of his memo: “In the event of moon disaster.”

Getting the astronauts to the moon was one thing, Nixon had been told. Getting them home was quite another.

“The most dangerous part of the moon mission was to get that lunar module back up into orbit of the moon and join the command ship,” Safire told Tim Russert in 1999 on an episode of “Meet the Press”, just after the memo was released. “If they couldn’t, and there was a good risk that they couldn’t, then they would have to be abandoned on the moon — left to die there.”

Had Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin been stranded on the moon, left to choose between starvation or suicide, Nixon would have given the following address.

“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”

Those words by Safire never had to be spoken.

Armstrong, 82, died Saturday a national hero, just after the 43rd anniversary of his footstep that changed history.

Along with the flag Armstrong and Aldrin planted on the moon, they left a plaque. It is inscribed with other words that Safire wrote:

"Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-armstrong-eulogy-moon-20120825,0,5041703.story

[dumbas]

I read "First Man" a few years back, it records his life and Neil Armstrong gave the Author unprecedented access to his notes.

A common theme through the book is the question, why was Neil Armstrong the "First Man"? It would seem that the more people the author asked, the more answers he got. I lent my copy to a friend however, from recollection there were some amazing stories in the book. A few that spring to mind and in no particular order,

1. On final descent to the moon, Armstrong heard a discussion regarding an "error code" and fully expected to be ordered to abort the landing.

2. Gravity is not a constant on the moon and as he struggled to find a landing site, he was not only aware that he running out gas, but he could enter an area of enhanced gravity that could lead to a hard landing and sentence him an Aldrin to spending their final hours on the moon (permanently).

3. The first scheduled event after landing was for the astronauts to have a sleep! This was at the insistence of the flight surgeons. The sleep did not occur.

4. Aldrin, a devout Catholic, took Communion shortly after landing. Armstrong looked out the window.

5. Whilst there's video footage of Armstrong on the moon, there are no colour shots of Armstrong on the Moon's surface. Armstrong had the camera and took the photos. The book "First Man" has a photo of Armstrong, but it is actually Armstrong's reflection in Aldrin's visor. It is still, however, a stunning photo!!

6. The first scheduled action on the lunar surface was to get some rocks and put them in the Lunar Module in case they had to leave in a hurry. The last was to dump the garbage.

7. The astronauts took items into space and sold them to supplement their modest government salaries. It is not fully known what Armstrong took with him. When asked in a Press Conference what he would like to take to the moon, Armstrong replied " more fuel". I remember his answer every time I have to make a difficult fuel decision.

8. Apollo 11 was not originally scheduled to land on the moon. It was only a few weeks before launch the decision was taken that they would land.

9. Armstrong was reknown for being calm and placid. However, he broke this calmness when people suggested the lunar landing was faked. Indeed there is almost an entire chapter in the book devoted to this. Aldrin famously punched a serial lunar landing sceptic.

10. Armstrong considered himself an Engineer rather than a pilot. He was did not seek, nor enjoyed fame. He enjoyed teaching and had a passion for Purdue University. Interestingly, Purdue can claim the first and last man on the moon. ( Gene Cernan)

11. I believe Armstrong was not coached in what his first words on the lunar surface would be. He maintains he said it was a small step for "a man", but the transmission was garbled and history records it as a small step " for man".

A truly great man. Ever since I read his book, I smile when I hear that some sportsman or media star is referred to as a "hero". No disrespect to the sportstar or media "hero", however the person making the claim really needs to read "First Man".