UPDATE: As a boy of 11 years old, I watched much of this in utter awe as many of you did on that Sunday in July, 1969. It is well worth watching again. I get choked up just watching.
America has just lost its most heroic son. I’m sad. It is doubly sad that America’s manned space program is also dead.
This poem, a favorite of pilots worldwide, seems the most appropriate:
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
– Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee, No 412 squadron, RCAF, Killed 11 December 1941
Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who became first to walk on the moon as commander of Apollo 11, has died. He was 82 years old.
He was born in the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, on Aug. 5, 1930.
On July 20, 1969, half a billion people — a sixth of the world’s population at the time — watched a ghostly black-and-white television image as Armstrong backed down the ladder of the lunar landing ship Eagle, planted his left foot on the moon’s surface, and said, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Twenty minutes later his crewmate, Buzz Aldrin, joined him, and the world watched as the men spent the next two hours bounding around in the moon’s light gravity, taking rock samples, setting up experiments, and taking now-iconic photographs.
more; here: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/neil-armstrong-man-moon-dead/story?id=12325140#.UDkpQqAnBio
UPDATE: Andrew Revkin has an interesting backstory on the space race that I think is worth reading here: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/the-cold-war-push-behind-neil-armstrongs-one-small-step/
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I salute the man from Wapakoneta, Ohio who took one giant leap for mankind.
I offer my deep regrets and condolences to his family and friends.
We need more like Neil.
Absolutely :-(.
There are so few people in this world who can say they were the very first to do something. Neil Armstrong certainly could. So precious few have been able to bring the world together, if only for a little bit. For that one supreme “giant leap” of a moment, Neil Armstrong did. I hope future generations can understand what he meant to this world.
Not many heroes in my life. Not every year we lose one.
RIP Neil Armstrong.
RIP. A true Hero.
There are a lot of “firsts” out there, and most of them are really meaningless.
But first human on the moon !!!!!
WOW !!!
All of the Apollo astronauts were very brave men indeed.
RIP
I too salute the man who risked his life to save mankind from domination by the USSR !
One of my childhood heroes.
It becomes even sadder when you think that my generation had heroes like Armstrong, Aldrin, etc, while the younger generations today have Beaver Boy, generic rapper #48,918 and Gaga. What is going on?
One wants to mark moments like this in a public forum. I can think of no finer place to express my deep sadness over the loss of one of our finest on Anthony’s courageous blog. Yes, the ‘right stuff’.
[Thank you, Cathy. Always enjoy visiting your blog. ~dbs, mod.]
R.I.P.
I think it’s fair to say that his was a life of great achievement.
Technical aside: The current picture is not of the Apollo 11 mission.
> It is doubly sad that America’s manned space program is also dead.
This will probably make me feel old:
The last Apollo flight was in December 1972.
People less than 39 weren’t alive then.
And today – we can’t even launch a person into low Earth orbit.
He was a patriot to the end.
He made me so proud to be an Ohioan when I was 19 and still does. I’m sad.
He never liked the limelight.
Interestingly, besides the video of his first step, the only picture of Neil on the moon is his reflection in Buzz’s helmet, since he had the Hasselblad mounted on his suit.
RIP Neil
I was a 22 year old kid in the Navy that day in 1969, thinking I knew it all — I didn’t! I watched the event on a 6″ TV set plugged into the cigarette lighter of my car! Thank you Neil Armstrong for helping bring the technology from there to now! I share your name as my middle. Godspeed Neil Armstrong!
RIP , the coolest astronaut ever, and the acme of a more heroic age.
Remind us of what we so recently were, and shame us for what we have now become.
Possibly the most famous person to ever have lived – and probably one of the most missed at this time – RIP.
So many great people seem to be dying these days. The loss of the manned space program is an exclamation point on Neil Armstrong’s death.
I, too, am old enough to say, “I was there”, if only in watching him on TV after my school exams. Another mournful milestone. His family can be justly proud. R.I.P., Neil, you were a brave man.
Well, what can I say – as an Armstrong myself (no relation), for the last 40+ years, he has been affectionately referred to as my ‘Uncle Neil’ as a mark of respect. He also visited the Armstrong Clan Trust some 20 odd years ago at Bamburgh Castle and met my grandparents (both now deceased). They spoke very highly of him but noted he was quite meek and reserved.
Still, a jolly good innings methinks, and a darned fine legacy for mankind!
RIP Niel Armstrong…….
He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement: “This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:
“In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup.”
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/communion.asp
Very sorry to learn of the passing of Neil Armstrong. He was a childhood hero of mine.
“…next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.”
On what basis do you say that the U.S. manned space program is “dead”? We have astronauts aboard the station right now, and within three years or so, we’ll have multiple private American spaceflight providers. The next decade will be the most exciting for human spaceflight since the sixties.
Rand, we have no lifting capability for manned space flight at this time. I didn’t say it was permanently dead, but for for all intents and purposes, a U.S. manned space launch capability does not exist right now. All of the MSP launch hardware and much of the staff has been retired.
See you friend, on the dark side of the moon. GK
A different kind of NASA. A different kind of man.