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/
Seconded
DaveE.
Here are my thoughts on Professor Armstrong, over at PJMedia.
I am old enough to remember when the “S” in NASA actually meant something. Neil Armstrong was the epitome of everything that the USA once stood for so proudly.
A hero has died, but more importantly the dream has been dying for a while now …
@ur momisugly~bds…I object.
What I wrote is true.
Godspeed, Neil Armstrong.
RIP Neil Armstrong!
Beyond this sad news, I 100% agree with Rand Simberg and Dan in California. America’s Manned Space Program is alive and well on the ISS. The future of transportation to LEO is the job of SpaceX and the other companies mentioned by Dan.
BEO exploration will happen when NASA has the balls to stand up to the pork-minded House and Senate and demands REAL vision and programs instead of BS like the SLS that wastes the finite resources of NASA on a monster rocket that is nothing more than a jobs program.
Just my opinion, but saying “It is doubly sad that America’s manned space program is also dead.” is just as bad as a warmist saying “CAGW is settled science.”
It’s simply not true.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings and commented:
“Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
“It is doubly sad that America’s manned space program is also dead.”
Wrong.
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew/ccicap-announcement.html
The Commercial Crew programme is progressing well, despite the best efforts of those wedded to old, bloated “cost-plus” government space to discredit or disrupt it. In the next few years the US will have at least THREE man-capable commercial orbital vehicles (Dragon, DreamChaser, CST-100) competing on technical and economic merits.
This is probably not the right time to argue about what we can and can’t do in space in the next few years.
My sadness stems not just from the fact that a great man has died, but that I was an excited schoolboy when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, and will probably be well into retirement before anyone returns there.
We honour his memory. But let us also regret the wasted decades that followed his triumph; the subordination of NASA into a hundred porkbarrel bureaucracies and faddish groups of charlatans; and the missed opportunities of ‘what might have been’.
It’s a shame since his momentous achievement of our civilization, 43 years ago, that a person still hasn’t set foot on Mars. Would have been nice to have a photograph of him/her meeting Neil Armstrong and shaking hands.
I think Neil Armstrong would want, at this critical juncture in history, for Americans to make a political choice that would reinvigorate our nation and act with confidence toward the future. He would likely vote for another change.
RIP, Mr. Armstrong. A man of men.
Let none of us disappoint.
Very true Thuthseeker
NASA is an abbreviation for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They have certainly dropped their original ball to persue the money. Windmills and Solar panels are where they are now at. Sad.
Back on topic. Very very sad to learn of Neil Armstrong’s death. He was a truely great man. An inspiration for us all.
RIP.
Could do without the heroic jingoistic stuff though.
Rest in peace, Neil Armstrong.
This month two great men passed away who are equally going to be remembered 1000 years from now. Martin Fleischmann and Neil Armstrong.
Neil Armstrong passed away in fame while Martin Fleischmann passed away in obscurity.
I know many here disagre with me, but this is what I believe. Time will tell!
I have a feeling that the death of Neil Armstrong is more significant than the press has first realised.
Not only did he turn out to be the most modest person that anyone could pick to be the first man to walk on the moon. He is also the person who is embeded in the brains of billions across the world who watched his moon landing. And he never put a step wrong since.
Anthony and all of my American friends, for me, Mr. Armstrong was more then an American Hero. He was a world hero He exemplified what we all should strive for, courage, duty, truth and a real humility. Mr Armstrong, you are already missed by your American Brethren, and the rest of the world. Rest in peace my hero.
Words by Neil Armstrong via PJMedia
“What are not easily stolen from you without your cooperation are your principles and your values. They are your most important possessions and, if carefully selected and nurtured, will
well serve you and your fellow man. Society’s future will depend on a continuous improvement program for the human character. And what will that future bring? I do not know, but it will be exciting.”
Modest, courageous, intelligent and highly skilled…….
Vale Neil Armstrong
I went out and looked up at the moon tonight. That was one hell of a leap, Neil!
Neil, Buzz and Michael of Apollo 11 and all who followed them on the Apollo programme were international heroes, not just American heroes. In my eyes they represented all of mankind when they took the ultimate risk for the progression of science and adventure.
These guys showed the rest of mankind what it was like to visit another world and it’s a sad day for planet Earth.
Deepest condolences to his family and friends. x
In December 0f 1969 I was inb Chu Lai, RVN. The Bob Hope show came to an absolute standstill for over 5 minutes of standing ovation, when Neil Armstrong was introduced. Even in the midst of war, we know we stood in the presence of greatness.
Anthony added:
Yeah, worth reading, but I’m a little surprised he had to look into the link to the Cold War. Perhaps my extra six years was enough to figure out what was going on.
When President Kennedy announced we were “going to the Moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard,” (quoted from memory, might be off a few words), the unstated real reason was that it would reestablish the US ahead of the Soviets in access and control of Earth orbit. The Soviets had been first with Sputnik, beeping away overhead and there was not a thing we could do about it except be glad it didn’t carry an atomic warhead.
Things weren’t much better when Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth. It was after that event that Kennedy launched the space race. By the time we did make it to the moon, the Soviets had essentially bowed out of that race and turned their attention to space stations, really the more logical next step.
The big failing of the near monomaniacal pursuit of landing a man on the moon and bringing him back safely was that no one had prepared for the next step. Through Apollo 17, the focus remained on engineering, and science was done by test pilots. We met the goal, why are we going back when we have so many problems on Earth? The only saving grace to the cancellation of Apollo 18 was that geologist Harrison Schmitt mission was moved to Apollo 17.
That was my introduction to the political reality of NASA. Skylab was an interesting project done on the cheap, and fell out of orbit before the Space Shuttle’s promise of a quick turnaround
“space truck” could get there to boost Skylab higher.
Even when commercial entities started getting interested in their own launches, they used NASA hardare. Around the same time I began reading accounts from people leaving NASA and basically having to learn how to be a productive engineer elsewhere. (Fortunately the unmanned program and JPL has done better.)
Companies are now getting going that are relying on their own mettle, so that’s good, and perhaps NASA is getting thir act back together, though given the fickle funding from Congress, I’m not impressed. At any rate, if I didn’t spend so much time here, I’d be better up to date on efforts from private enterprise to get us back into space. Corporate politics can be an awesome force too, but at least their pendulum generally doesn’t get pushed as hard as Congress does theirs.
Wikipedia’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race is worth reading too.
I’ll never forget that moment. As his family suggested, everytime we see the Moon, wink at Neil and I may add to all the guys who went there and around!
I read, can’t say where, that Buzz Aldrin was selected for Apollo 11 because he was a crack mathematician. And Neil Armstrong was selected because he was a crack pilot. He could fly anything. He proved this when he turned off the auto-pilot and landed the LEM himself. They sounded so cool on the radio, unfazed by the fact that they had less than 60 seconds of fuel.
I was 9. I watched every minute that I could stay awake, most of it.
I knew then that I was witnessing history.
RIP Neil.
If I may contribute an interesting ‘read’ from that era – here is a written account by Sven Grahn on radio astronomer Richard S. Flagg’s (University of Florida in Gainesville) experience in “Tracking Apollo-17 from Florida” from launch through to orbiting the moon and includes their observation of Doppler shift from the radio signals from Apollo 17 as that mission orbited the moon (for any who doubt the veracity of those missions, such things would hard to synthesize or replicate from a ‘back lot’ in Arizona):
http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Apollo17/APOLLO17.htm
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