We have Rats in our building too….surprise, surprise!!! Wonder if they are related.
Monday, August 27, 2012
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1. RATS in Building 9
2. Working With Fire on Astronaut To-Do List
3. Job Opportunities
4. Looking for Open House Volunteers for Mission Control Center in Building 30
5. Register for Upcoming Nutrition Class
6. Recent JSC Announcement
7. International Astronautical Congress (IAC) Virtual Forums Registration Now Open
8. Introducing Starport Kid Space - Short Term Child Care at the Gilruth Center
9. The Inner Space Yoga and Pilates Studio -- Additional Week of Free Demo Class
________________________________________ QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out. ”
-- James Bryant Conant
________________________________________
1. RATS in Building 9
JSC team members:
Stop by the Building 9 observation platform between Aug. 20 and 29 to see the Research and Technology Studies (RATS) 2012 tests in action. We're doing two three-day habitability studies in the Multi-Mission Space Exploration Vehicle (MMSEV) Generation 2A cabin, as well as simulations to the surface of an asteroid in the MMSEV with integrated spacewalks in JSC's Virtual Reality Lab. We will also simulate astronaut activities in microgravity using the Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS) and incorporate a fuel cell to power the MMSEV.
Please view from the catwalk, not the floor, during tests. Please give Space Center Houston tours the right-of-way.
For information about the RATS tests and other NASA analog missions:
http://www.nasa.gov/desertrats
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/analogs/index.html
Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASA.DRATS
Or Twitter: @DESERT_RATS
Wendy Watkins x38316 http://www.nasa.gov/desertrats
[top]
2. Working With Fire on Astronaut To-Do List
Though fire safety on the International Space Station is of utmost importance, the astronauts have the opportunity to actually set very small fires aboard the station. These fires are contained using special hardware inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox facility. They do this to help researchers examine and learn how specific materials burn and then self-extinguish in the space environment.
To read the full story and watch a video, go to http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/bass_video.html
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
[top]
3. Job Opportunities
Where Do I Find Job Opportunities?
Both internal Competitive Placement Plan and external JSC job announcements are posted on both the HR Portal and USAJOBS - http://www.usajobs.gov - website. Through the HR portal, civil servants can view summaries of all the agency jobs that are currently open at https://hr.nasa.gov/portal/server.pt/community/employees_home/239/job_opportu...
To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop down menu and select JSC HR. The "Jobs link", will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies, please call your Human Resources Representative.
Lisa Pesak x30476
[top]
4. Looking for Open House Volunteers for Mission Control Center in Building 30
The Building 30 Mission Control Center (MCC) will be participating this year in the JSC Open House on Sept. 29, opening our doors to the public, and we need your help. There is an estimated 30,000 people that will show up to see the MCC and what goes on behind the scenes. The public is so interested in learning about space and what it takes to get there.
If you are interested in volunteering and spreading the word about the MCC's history up through the current station programs, email Rebecca Marsh at rebecca.e.marsh@nasa.gov to sign up.
Positions that are available:
- Apollo Mission Control floor
- Apollo Viewing Room (movie will be showing)
- Shuttle Viewing Room
- Hallway support
- Elevator support
- Greeters/welcome desk
Two- or three-hour shifts requested between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Very flexible.
Thank you very much for your help and support!
Rebecca Marsh x36873
[top]
5. Register for Upcoming Nutrition Class
Top 10 Nutrition Mistakes: You read all the books and know what to look for on the food packages at the store. Studies show that most of us think we are eating a lot better than we actually are. It is easy to buy into some popular misconceptions, some that might mean we aren't eating as healthy as we thought. This class will help you identify common nutrition mistakes and offer ways to avoid them. Presentation will begin at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 11.
You can sign up for this class online at: http://www.explorationwellness.com/WellnessCSS/CourseCatalogSelection/
If you're working on improving your approach to healthy nutrition but can't attend a class, we offer free one-on-one consultations with Glenda Blaskey, the JSC Registered Dietitian.
Glenda Blaskey x41503 http://www.explorationwellness.com/Web/scripts/Nutrition.aspx
[top]
6. Recent JSC Announcement
Please visit the JSC Announcements (JSCA) Web page to view the newly posted announcement:
JSCA 12-023: Communications with Industry Procurement Solicitation for Johnson Space Center Protective Services Follow-On Contract
Archived announcements are also available on the JSCA Web page.
Linda Turnbough x36246 http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov/DocumentManagement/announcements/default.aspx
[top]
7. International Astronautical Congress (IAC) Virtual Forums Registration Now Open
Do you want to be a part of the IAC but can't get to Naples? Then the Young Professional Virtual Forum (YPVF) events could be the answer. With a computer & internet connection, or just a phone, you can participate in the IAC. You need to register for each session, and registration is free.
The five YPVFs will focus on the following:
1. Space Operations
2. Space Education and Outreach Committee
3. Space Communications and Navigation
4. Human Space Endeavours
5. Global Earth Observation System of Systems
For free registration and to see the list of speakers, please visit: http://iafastro.org/index.html?title=VF
Kat Coderre 281-336-5027 http://iafastro.org/index.html?title=VF
[top]
8. Introducing Starport Kid Space - Short Term Child Care at the Gilruth Center
Starport now offers short-term child care while you work-out at the Gilruth Center. Anyone who is participating in a group exercise class or working out in the basketball gym and/or fitness center may bring their children to be supervised by our staff as you utilize the facility.
Days: Mon & Wed 4:30-6:30pm and Sat 8:30-10:30am
Cost: $3/hour
Ages: 4+
Location: Inner Space Mind/Body Studio at the Gilruth Center
Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Youth/ChildCare.cfm for more information.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
[top]
9. The Inner Space Yoga and Pilates Studio -- Additional Week of Free Demo Class
Starport recently announced the newest addition to our fitness program - The Inner Space Yoga and Pilates Studio. We held free Yoga and Pilates demo classes to showcase this program, and because of the popularity of the classes, we have extended this offer for an additional week! During the week of Aug. 27, we will hold free demo classes of what will soon be offered at The Inner Space Yoga and Pilates Studio at the Gilruth Center. Anyone may join in on the demo classes, but space is limited so please sign up at the Gilruth Center front desk or call x30304 to participate.
Plus ... membership packages can be purchased for half price until Friday!
Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/MindBody/ for more information on The Inner Space.
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
[top]
________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
NASA TV:
· 10:55 am Central (11:55 EDT) - Exp 32 event for “Destination Station” at JFK Library, Boston
· 4 pm Central (5 EDT) - Mars Rover Curiosity Mission News Conference
Human Spaceflight News
Monday – August 27, 2012
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Is a 1-Year Space Station Mission in the Works?
Tariq Malik - Space.com
A Russian report this week claimed that an American and a Russian will launch on a one-year trip to the International Space Station in 2015. But NASA says the endurance space mission is just an idea, for now. The short news story Wednesday by Russia's Interfax news agency cited an unnamed source within Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to state that the marathon space station flight, which would be twice as long as typical six-month trips, will launch in three years and feature a two-person crew. But NASA officials say not so fast. Nothing, they say, has been decided yet.
NASA ready for operational cargo flights by SpaceX
Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com
SpaceX has completed all milestones under a development and demonstration partnership with NASA, clearing the way for the firm to begin regular operational cargo deliveries to the International Space Station in October, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced Thursday. Technicians inside SpaceX's hangar at Cape Canaveral are preparing Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for the resupply flight, which is tentatively scheduled to lift off Oct. 8. The Dragon spacecraft for the mission arrived at the launch site Aug. 14. Workers are preparing the Falcon 9 rocket for a countdown rehearsal and engine test firing.
Orbital Sciences readying for resupply mission to Space Station
Marjorie Censer - Washington Post
Dulles-based Orbital Sciences was founded 30 years ago with a goal of helping to commercialize the government-dominated world of space. Late this year, the company will have an opportunity to show its own readiness for a much larger role as it makes its first resupply mission to the International Space Station. “There’s no shortage of pressure,” said Frank L. Culbertson, deputy general manager of Orbital’s advanced programs group and a former astronaut himself.
Is this how man will get back to the moon?
The space elevator to the lunar surface that 'could be built today'
Mark Prigg - London Daily Mail
A space elevator capable of taking robots and humans back to the surface of the moon can be built today, a California firm has claimed. The radical LiftPort system would allow cheap and simple access to the lunar surface via a ‘ribbon’ cable. Eventually it is hoped a 'space elevator' could even take people from earth directly to the lunar surface.
NASA jets, ticket sales taking off for Endeavour's flight to L.A.
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
NASA is deploying a few high-flying paparazzi to Hollywood to scout out the best photo spots for next month's arrival of one of its biggest stars: space shuttle Endeavour. Meanwhile on the East Coast, tickets have just gone on sale for the public to stake out their own photo ops to see Endeavour as it departs its Florida spaceport for the final time. Endeavour, which flew 25 times to space, is being ferried to Los Angeles for display at the California Science Center.
Jets flying over L.A., preparing for space shuttle Endeavour
Los Angeles Times
A NASA advance team took to the skies above Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon in preparation for the scheduled arrival of the space shuttle Endeavour next month. NASA officials urged residents not to be concerned if they spot two jets flying at a relatively low altitude, about 1,500 feet, over the greater Los Angeles area. “We want to alert the public that these are loud jets and they will be flying fairly low,” said NASA spokesman Michael Curie. The flights, by a T-38 trainer jet and an F-18 Hornet, are to help the agency plan for a possible flyover by Endeavour when it arrives in September, en route to its permanent new home at the California Science Center.
Open Music Society Foundation to perform at Endeavour arrival ceremony
Asbarez Armenian News
The Open Music Society Foundation (OMSF), a Los Angeles-based arts organization, has been selected by the California Science Center Foundation to present artistic performances at the upcoming Space Shuttle Endeavour arrival ceremony, the OMSF announced Friday. For the past several months, the California Science Center and OMSF have collaborated to develop the artistic program of the highly anticipated event, which will take place at Los Angeles International Airport on September 20. The OMSF’s involvement comprises the design and production of several especially commissioned performances, to be featured at various stages of the arrival ceremony.
Lack of funding may scrub launch technology
John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)
It's been 10 years since the first launch of the United States' current breed of big rockets, dubbed Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles. Lockheed Martin's Atlas V first blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in August 2002. The first of Boeing's Delta IV rockets lifted off a few months later. After 10 years of near perfection in the delivery of important science, military and spy satellites to orbit, the program is a reliable workhorse now operated by the Boeing-Lockheed partnership known as United Launch Alliance.
Manned missions to Mars aren't just sci-fi
Louis Friedman - USA Today (Opinion)
(Friedman is executive director emeritus of The Planetary Society)
As the robot Curiosity touched down on Mars, the event was accessed via Internet by millions worldwide, witnessed by tens of thousands at live events, and highlighted in the media for days. I hope that politicians and bureaucrats got the message: Space exploration is not just valuable to scientists; it is also popular with the public who pays taxes. And why not? The exploration of Mars is not only a search for signs of alien life. It is an exploration of the human future. Mars is the only world accessible to us beyond Earth that was once and again may be habitable. It is the laboratory in which the evolution of the human species will be tested and ultimately determined. In its atmosphere, on its surface, and through its water, we seek answers and insights about the nature, origin and evolution of life, particularly of ourselves. Contemplating Mars, we wonder: Are we alone in the universe? Where will our future lie?
Why Space is Good Business
Christopher John Farley - Wall Street Journal
In the wake of the passing of pioneering astronaut Neil Armstrong, Neil deGrasse Tyson, author of “Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier,” tweeted that men walking on the moon was “The only positive event in the last 50 yrs for which everyone remembers where they were when it happened.”
IN STEP WITH NEIL ARMSTRONG…
Apollo 11’s Command Module Columbus – Saturday, Aug. 25, 2012 at the National Air & Space Museum
Astronaut was one cool customer
James Dean - Florida Today
Jay Honeycutt, former KSC director, worked with Neil Armstrong during his Apollo flight and again when Armstrong was deputy chair of the shuttle Challenger disaster investigation. “He certainly deserved every accolade he could ever have gotten, but it was his belief that it was the entire team that was successful, and it wasn’t just he and Buzz that made that flight what it was,” Honeycutt said. It was his 1966 Gemini 8 mission where Armstrong really showed his mettle. The capsule had a “struck thruster that certainly was a heartbeat away from disaster, and he pulled that off and saved the mission.” It was Honeycutt who put crews through lunar landing simulations. “Neil never blinked, even with the best we could throw at him,” he said. (NO FURTHER TEXT)
Armstrong was 'always seeking knowledge'
James Dean - Florida Today
Lee Solid of Merritt Island was the Kennedy Space Center site director for Rocketdyne during the historic flight that took Neil Armstrong and his crew to the moon. “We had an interface with those guys, talked to them several times,” Solid said. “I got to know Neil quite well even though I didn’t work the spacecraft end of things.” The reason: Rocketdyne engines helped power the Saturn V. Solid recalled that a few years ago, he hosted Armstrong at an anniversary event here. “We admired him because he was quiet, he listened intently when you talked to him, he was always seeking knowledge ... You can say the name Neil Armstrong, and even today’s generation knows who we’re talking about.” (NO FURTHER TEXT)
To hero-astronaut Armstrong, moonwalk 'just' a job
Lisa Cornwell & Seth Borenstein - Associated Press
Neil Armstrong made "one giant leap for mankind" with a small step onto the moon. He commanded the historic landing of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century's scientific expeditions and becoming the first man to walk on the moon. He was "a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job," his family said in a statement.
Armstrong called humble hero who served country
Colleen Long - Associated Press
When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon all those years ago, he made his country believe that anything was possible with ingenuity and dedication — and in the process became one of America's greatest heroes, his friends, colleagues and admirers said Saturday after news that the former astronaut had died. "When I think of Neil, I think of someone who for our country was dedicated enough to dare greatly," said former astronaut John Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program and was a close friend. He said Armstrong showed exemplary skill and dedication. The idea of Armstrong as a humble pilot who served his country above all echoed around the country Saturday, by visitors to museums that fete his accomplishments and by his former NASA colleagues. Armstrong died Saturday at age 82 from complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, his family said.
In Just 'One Small Step' Armstrong Became An Icon
Allison Keyes - National Public Radio
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=160059467&m=160059522
It was the kind of history that ignites the imagination of humanity. On July 20, 1969, hundreds of millions of people around the world watched or listened as the lunar module Eagle carried astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the moon. Armstrong got on the radio to let them know "the Eagle has landed." Almost seven hours later, Armstrong stepped off the ladder in his bulky white space suitand said those famous words: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind"
Buzz Aldrin: Neil Armstrong Was ‘The Best Pilot I Ever Knew’
Taylor Dinerman - The Daily Beast
From the point of view of America's politicians, the most significant thing about Neil Armstrong was that on July 20, 1969, when he became the first man to set foot on the moon, he was a civilian. Unlike his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, Armstrong was not a military officer assigned to NASA. It would have been too much of a contradiction if the lunar plaque signed by Richard Nixon, which read in part, "We came in peace for all mankind" was put in place by a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel or a Navy commander. It was not that Armstrong had never served in the military. As a naval aviator during the Korean War, he'd flown F9F Panther fighter-bombers from an aircraft carrier off the coast of North Korea. In the course of five combat tours he earned a reputation as one of the best pilots in the Navy. His skill as a research and test pilot certainly impressed Buzz Aldrin. Armstrong was “the best pilot I ever knew,” Aldrin said in an interview with The Daily Beast shortly after his former colleague’s death. That is high praise indeed coming from a man who had flown F-86 jet fighters in combat in Korea and who has his own impressive set of flying and technical academic credentials.
Neil Armstrong’s television exit almost as quiet as his life
Associated Press
By the yardstick of history, Neil Armstrong was among the most accomplished men ever to walk on the planet that he looked upon from afar one magical week in July 1969. Television news didn’t seem to fully recognize the importance of the first human to walk on the moon on the weekend he died. In the hours after Armstrong’s death was announced, news networks were airing canned programming — jailhouse documentaries, a rerun interview with Rielle Hunter, Mike Huckabee’s weekend show. Menacing satellite pictures of Tropical Storm Isaac had much more air time than Armstrong’s dusty hops on the lunar surface. Talk of the upcoming GOP national convention sucked up the air. A trio of factors played in to the lack of attention.
Neil Armstrong: 'Diffident' emissary of mankind
Paul Rincon - BBC News
Neil Armstrong was a towering, if not mythical, figure in the world of spaceflight. As the world sat awestruck in front of their television sets, marveling at the achievement of sending an emissary to the surface of another world, he was one man and every man. As President Nixon's plaque on the lunar module proclaimed: "We came in peace for all mankind". Armstrong's simple yet brilliant refrain about small steps and giant leaps - its intonation betraying such acute awareness of the historic nature of the moment - remains forever etched into the minds of a generation who witnessed the moon landings first hand. In a rare interview, Armstrong gave almost an hour of his time this year in a video conversation with the Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia (CPA).
The small step for Neil Armstrong was a giant blow to the Soviet Union
Paul Koring - Globe and Mail
Watching the bubble-helmeted, space-suited Neil Armstrong bounce carefully across the moon’s dusty, airless surface – a historic moment seen live by 600 million people on grainy black-and-white television screens – was mankind’s first globally shared experience. But the nerve-wracking thrill shared by one-fifth of the planet’s population in 1969 – including tens of thousands who bought their first TV especially to witness the moon landing – was less a “giant leap for mankind” than a U.S. hammer-blow to the Soviet Union and a tipping point in the Cold War from which Moscow’s Communists never recovered. Mr. Armstrong died this weekend at 82, but the legacy of his moon landing lives on.
Armstrong: a never-read eulogy recalls danger of his feat
Laura Nelson - Los Angeles Times
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.”
The Right Man
Humble Neil Armstrong was the perfect choice for his moon mission
Wall Street Journal
Even in the current age of constant electronic wizardry, Neil Armstrong's 1969 walk on the moon remains a moment of incomparable magic. For those who saw it, not on YouTube but as it happened, the moment will last a lifetime. Technology and engineering science were not then the lingua franca of daily life that they are now. People watched the moonwalk on bulky television sets, often in black and white. No matter. Seeing Neil Armstrong in his puffy white astronaut's suit descend from the lunar vehicle to touch his foot to the moon's surface was transcendent. Uncounted numbers of Americans and earthlings elsewhere went outside later, stared up at the familiar milky globe in the darkness and marveled in pride and awe.
Neil Armstrong's Immortal Footprint
Larry Bell - Forbes
Neil Armstrong has now been inducted into history’s loftiest celestial ranks. He is greatly honored not only for what he accomplished, but fundamentally because of the inspirational spirit of exceptionalism he exemplified after America’s psyche was badly jolted by unexpected Cold War events. Those shock waves began on October 4, 1957 when a tiny Soviet satellite chirped alarming evidence of technological superiority. Then, only one year later, a young cosmonaut named Yuri Gagarin leant his human face to a new extraterrestrial space era that threatened to leave the U.S. behind. America immediately responded. On May 25, 1961, only a few weeks after Gagarin’s orbital flight, President John Kennedy upped the ante, committing the U.S. to send a man to the moon and return him safely before the end of that decade.
Armstrong’s America
Small-town boy on moon
Arthur Herman - New York Post
Most of the commentary about Neil Armstrong’s death on Saturday celebrated his being the first man on the moon, and rightly so. I’d like to remember him, however, for what he did right here on earth. His life and character embodied key virtues of our culture that made this country great, and can do so again — if we just believe in and embrace them the way Neil Armstrong did. First, there were the traditional small-town virtues of the Ohio town where he was born in 1930 and raised. That was where his father followed the career that’s the butt of every late night comedian, as an accountant, and Neil became what every liberal activist now despises, an Eagle Scout. But small-town didn’t mean small horizons then any more than it does now. Neil’s greatest dream was to fly, and he earned his pilot’s license before he learned how to drive.
The Cold War Push Behind Neil Armstrong’s ‘One Small Step’
Andrew Revkin - New York Times (Opinion)
I was saddened to learn of the death of NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, whose “one small step” so fixated my generation (I was born in 1956). The video above provides an unusual split-screen view of Armstrong’s hop from the lunar module landing gear to the dusty lunar surface. The Apollo missions were utterly captivating for young science buffs like me (and my brother, whose room often smelled of glue as he assembled detailed spacecraft models). To review that era, start with the great “Mission to the Moon” interactive video feature produced by The Times.
__________
COMPLETE STORIES
Is a 1-Year Space Station Mission in the Works?
Tariq Malik - Space.com
A Russian report this week claimed that an American and a Russian will launch on a one-year trip to the International Space Station in 2015. But NASA says the endurance space mission is just an idea, for now.
The short news story Wednesday by Russia's Interfax news agency cited an unnamed source within Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to state that the marathon space station flight, which would be twice as long as typical six-month trips, will launch in three years and feature a two-person crew.
But NASA officials say not so fast. Nothing, they say, has been decided yet.
"We are exploring the idea of a one-year increment as part of preparations for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries of Johnson Space Center in Houston told SPACE.com. "But the discussion is very preliminary and no official decisions have been made."
The Interfax report also stated that the American on the mission would be veteran NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who stepped down as the agency's chief astronaut recently to rejoin its active spaceflying ranks. The Russian cosmonaut for the one-year crew has not been chosen, but a one-year mission would free up some Soyuz spacecraft seats for space tourists to visit the orbiting lab, Interfax reported.
If a one-year stay aboard the International Space Station is actually in the works, it could help lay the foundation for even more ambitious human spaceflight efforts down the road. President Barack Obama has challenged NASA to develop new spacecraft and technology in order to send astronauts to visit a nearby asteroid by 2025, and ultimately on to Mars in the 2030s.
A roundtrip journey to Mars, according to some mission concepts, would take about two years to complete. So a one-year stint on the International Space Station would allow scientists a chance to observe some of the longer-term effects of spaceflight beyond what crews have reported to date.
In fact, a one-year trip into space has actually been done before.
In the mid-1990s, Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, a medical doctor, spent nearly 438 consecutive days in space during a marathon mission aboard the Mir Space Station. The mission began in January 1994 and ended in March 1995.
While Polyakov's endurance space trial helped researchers study the long-term physiological effects of human spaceflight, Russia has also had a keen interest in the psychological impact of spending such a long period away from Earth.
Last year, six volunteers representing Russia, Europe and China completed a staggering 520-day Mars mission simulation that aimed to recreate the isolation and mental stress of long-term spaceflight. That simulation, called the Mars500 mission, began in June 2010 and ended in November 2011.
The International Space Station is currently home to six crewmembers representing three different countries. The station's Expedition 32 crew includes three Russians, two Americans and a Japanese astronaut.
NASA, Russia and the space agencies of Canada, Europe and Japan built the $100 billion space station over more than decade. Construction began in 1998, with another Russian lab due to arrive at the station next year. A total of 15 different countries have participated in the station's construction.
NASA ready for operational cargo flights by SpaceX
Stephen Clark - SpaceflightNow.com
SpaceX has completed all milestones under a development and demonstration partnership with NASA, clearing the way for the firm to begin regular operational cargo deliveries to the International Space Station in October, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced Thursday.
Technicians inside SpaceX's hangar at Cape Canaveral are preparing Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft for the resupply flight, which is tentatively scheduled to lift off Oct. 8.
The Dragon spacecraft for the mission arrived at the launch site Aug. 14. Workers are preparing the Falcon 9 rocket for a countdown rehearsal and engine test firing.
The mission will be the first of 12 cargo deliveries contracted to SpaceX over the next few years. Each flight will carry up to 7,300 pounds of internal and external cargo to the space station and return up to 5,500 pounds of equipment to Earth.
NASA and SpaceX managers met in Houston last week to review the outcome of the company's May test flight to the space station, which demonstrated the Dragon's capability to rendezvous and berth with the complex with the aid of the lab's robotic arm.
The flight was the final milestone in SpaceX's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS, agreement with NASA.
"They have finished the COTS program," Bolden said Thursday inside the SpaceX hangar. "They're moving on to the next phase, which is money for them."
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract for 12 resupply missions through at least 2015.
On the Dragon spacecraft's most recent flight, astronauts unloaded cargo from the vehicle's pressurized module, then it returned to Earth on May 31 with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean after nine days in space. The capsule carried nonessential cargo to and from the space station on the test flight.
The results of the mission will permit SpaceX to deliver more valuable supplies, experiments, and spare parts to the station beginning with the October flight.
NASA and SpaceX signed the COTS agreement in August 2006 to fuse public and private funding for the development of a commercial cargo space transportation system for the space station.
The space agency paid SpaceX $396 million in installments as the company accomplished design, testing and flight milestones, including two test launches and demo missions of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule.
"They've met all their COTS milestones, including this year's successful demonstration mission to and from the International Space Station, and they're gearing up now for the first official contracted resupply mission, scheduled around the October timeframe."
The COTS program provided NASA funding to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., which is planning the first launch of its Antares rocket this fall.
Orbital's Cygnus cargo freighter will fly to the space station on a COTS demo flight in December, at the earliest, leading to the first of nine operational missions in early 2013.
Orbital Sciences readying for resupply mission to Space Station
Marjorie Censer - Washington Post
Dulles-based Orbital Sciences was founded 30 years ago with a goal of helping to commercialize the government-dominated world of space.
Late this year, the company will have an opportunity to show its own readiness for a much larger role as it makes its first resupply mission to the International Space Station.
“There’s no shortage of pressure,” said Frank L. Culbertson, deputy general manager of Orbital’s advanced programs group and a former astronaut himself.
With the end of NASA’s shuttle program and shrinking government budgets, NASA has refocused its attention on the capabilities of commercial companies. The agency awarded both Orbital and California-based SpaceX resupply contracts, marking a new opportunity for private space firms.
Orbital received a two-part deal. In the first stage, it has shared costs with NASA to develop the needed technology, and in the second, under a $1.9 billion contract, it will deliver 20 metric tons of supplies to the space station.
Now, the company is readying to launch space modules to the station that will deliver the material, take away the station’s trash and then burn up as they reenter the atmosphere.
On site at its Dulles complex are five units of the Cygnus — the space module that acts as the brains of the operation, using sensors and software to navigate itself to the space station. It will come within 10 meters of the station and then be brought in by the space station’s robotic arm, said Frank DeMauro, program director for the commercial resupply service program.
Attached to the Cygnus will be the cargo module, which is being built by Thales Alenia.
To get Cygnus and its cargo to space, Orbital has built the Antares, a rocket launcher that will take off from NASA’s facility on Wallops Island. Like the Cygnus, the Antares launcher is not reused; part of it drops into the ocean while another piece eventually burns up.
To prepare for eight missions, Orbital is building 10 Antares vehicles — two for test and demonstration missions — and 9 Cygnus modules — one will be used for the demonstration, but a simulated Cygnus will stand in during the test.
Orbital is expecting to run its first test at Wallops Island in late October, and the demonstration launch later this year. The first supply mission would happen early next year, and all eight are expected to be complete by early 2016.
Each mission is expected to take about a month; it takes about five days for the Cygnus to make it to the station, it will stay there for anywhere from two weeks to two months, and it will take another day or two for the spacecraft to disintegrate on reentry.
“The idea of now relying on private industry and let[ting] them lead the way has already been decided,” said Marco A. Caceres, director of space studies at the Teal Group. “The question is: Can industry do it without too many failures?”
He said Orbital’s success, along with that of SpaceX, which has already made it to the space station, would provide the needed competition and potentially open the door to more companies.
“There’s a lot at stake here because you’re really talking about the future of human spaceflight. It’s not going to be NASA that does it,” said Caceres. “It’s these companies ... that are supposedly going to be colonizing the moon and maybe even Mars.”
Is this how man will get back to the moon?
The space elevator to the lunar surface that 'could be built today'
Mark Prigg - London Daily Mail
A space elevator capable of taking robots and humans back to the surface of the moon can be built today, a California firm has claimed.
The radical LiftPort system would allow cheap and simple access to the lunar surface via a ‘ribbon’ cable.
Eventually it is hoped a 'space elevator' could even take people from earth directly to the lunar surface.
Today the firm, set up by an ex Nasa engineer, launched an online campaign to fund the first part of its project to build a lunar space lift.
It first plans to test the system on earth with a 2km high elevator.
Then, it plans to launch the lunar system.
Initially it would use a space elevator to link the moon to a space station.
The LiftPort Group wants to raise $8,000 on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter for its first step — creating a floating balloon platform tethered to the ground so that a robot can climb 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) into the sky.
‘About six months ago we had a fundamental breakthrough — a breakthrough we think will transform human civilization — and we want you to be a part of it,' said Michael Laine’ president of the LiftPort Group of the firm's fundraising site.
Laine is an ex-Nasa engineer who left the space agency to work on the idea.
‘I was personally involved with NASA’s 2001-2003 definitive research study,’ he said. ‘My company, LiftPort, grew out of the results of that study’.
The breakthrough will allow the LiftPort group to build a space elevator on the moon using existing technology and a single-launch rocket solution that has "Sputnik-like simplicity," Laine said.
He added that the concept could become a reality within eight years.
The firm has dozens of goals on its kickstarter page, ranging from a $1 to $10,000.
The most ambitious goal of raising $3 million — a target Laine doesn't expect to hit in the first Kickstarter — would allow the LiftPort Group to carry out a one-year feasibility study for the moon space elevator project.
A space elevator on the moon would face fewer complications than a space elevator on Earth because the moon has less gravity.
The firm hopes the technology could also be used for other applications on earth.
Such balloon platforms don't just help aim for the moon.
They could also act as cheap communications ‘towers’ on Earth to help provide wireless Internet, monitor crops, watch out for forest fires, or even carry cameras to provide an eye in the sky in the aftermath of natural disasters.
NASA jets, ticket sales taking off for Endeavour's flight to L.A.
Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com
NASA is deploying a few high-flying paparazzi to Hollywood to scout out the best photo spots for next month's arrival of one of its biggest stars: space shuttle Endeavour.
Meanwhile on the East Coast, tickets have just gone on sale for the public to stake out their own photo ops to see Endeavour as it departs its Florida spaceport for the final time. Endeavour, which flew 25 times to space, is being ferried to Los Angeles for display at the California Science Center.
On Saturday, two NASA jets — a T-38 astronaut trainer and an F-18 Hornet — circled the skies over Los Angeles at an altitude of approximately 1,500 feet (18,000 meters). The jet flights, which are in cooperation with the Federal Aviation Administration, have been described by NASA as only "to capture photographic imagery."
But it's no secret that the aircraft are part of the advance entourage for Endeavour. The retired orbiter, flying atop the space agency's modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, is scheduled to land at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Sept. 20.
Before touching down, the jumbo jet carrying Endeavour is expected to make several scenic flyovers of the L.A. area, setting up the possibility for some iconic shots to be taken of the shuttle soaring past famous landmarks like the Hollywood sign. Saturday's jet flights will scope out the best flight paths to capture those photos.
NASA photographers embarked on a similar set of flights before Endeavour's older sister, space shuttle Discovery, arrived in Washington, D.C. in April. Two T-38 training jets were dispatched to the nation's capital to plot the shuttle's path, which later led to photos of Discovery flying past the Capitol Building, Washington Monument, White House and other historic landmarks.
Fly-out photo ops
Details for when, where and how to see Endeavour arrive in Los Angeles have yet to be announced, nor have any of the potential flyover locations along the shuttle's trip from Florida to California. Tickets however, went on sale Friday (Aug. 24) to see Endeavour depart its launch and landing site for a final time.
NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex will host four days of activities leading up to the scheduled takeoff of Endeavour atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft on Sept. 17 at approximately 7:30 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).
With general admission, the public can view the ferry flight as it passes over the visitor complex. A limited number of $40 tickets (in addition to the general admission) will take guests out to NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), for a runway-side seat to view Endeavour take off on its ferry flight to California.
The Visitor Complex is also offering a $20 tour (in addition to the general admission) on Sept. 14 and 15 that will offer guests a "windshield view" of Endeavour as it is mated to the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. The special tour will also drive by Endeavour's launch pads.
Other activities include a chance to see Endeavour's final astronauts, the crew of the 2011 STS-134 mission, during their visit to the visitor complex.
Final ferry flight
Endeavour is the last of NASA's retired shuttles to take to the air.
In April, the fleet leader Discovery and the prototype test orbiter Enterprise were ferried to Washington, DC and New York City respectively. Atlantis, which is destined for the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, will be moved the short distance over land in November.
Endeavour will embark on a similar, if not longer road trip once in Los Angeles. For two days beginning on Oct. 12, the shuttle will be paraded atop a modified NASA wheeled transporter through the streets of Inglewood and L.A.
By dusk on Oct. 13, Endeavour is expected to be inside the California Science Center's newly-constructed Samuel Oschin Display Pavilion.
Endeavour's exhibit will open to the public on Oct. 30. The pavilion is a temporary display however, as the science center plans to ultimately house Endeavour in its planned Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, targeted to open in 2017.
For its permanent display, Endeavour will be mounted as it was on the launch pad with side-mounted rockets and a replica of its external tank. In preparation for that exhibit, a pair of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters were scheduled to arrive on Friday at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California, where they will be held until the science center is ready.
The two 149-foot long (45 meter) boosters were previously on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, from where they were trucked to California.
Jets flying over L.A., preparing for space shuttle Endeavour
Los Angeles Times
A NASA advance team took to the skies above Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon in preparation for the scheduled arrival of the space shuttle Endeavour next month.
NASA officials urged residents not to be concerned if they spot two jets flying at a relatively low altitude, about 1,500 feet, over the greater Los Angeles area. “We want to alert the public that these are loud jets and they will be flying fairly low,” said NASA spokesman Michael Curie.
The flights, by a T-38 trainer jet and an F-18 Hornet, are to help the agency plan for a possible flyover by Endeavour when it arrives in September, en route to its permanent new home at the California Science Center. The retired shuttle is scheduled to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport on Sept. 20, ferried from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the back of a modified 747.
Today’s reconnaissance mission will serve several purposes, Curie said. The pilots will be looking at potential hazards and challenges in the area, including cellphone, radio and TV towers, and considering the best routes for a scenic flyover of the area.
And they will be looking for the best camera angles for iconic photographs of the shuttle flying in over Los Angeles-area landmarks -- the Hollywood sign, Disneyland, the Pacific Ocean and others, although Curie said he could not specify.
“There are a lot of landmarks and beautiful buildings and landscape in the area that would make tremendous photo ops with the space shuttle flying near it,” he said.
Open Music Society Foundation to perform at Endeavour arrival ceremony
Asbarez Armenian News
The Open Music Society Foundation (OMSF), a Los Angeles-based arts organization, has been selected by the California Science Center Foundation to present artistic performances at the upcoming Space Shuttle Endeavour arrival ceremony, the OMSF announced Friday.
For the past several months, the California Science Center and OMSF have collaborated to develop the artistic program of the highly anticipated event, which will take place at Los Angeles International Airport on September 20.
The OMSF’s involvement comprises the design and production of several especially commissioned performances, to be featured at various stages of the arrival ceremony.
The California Science Center was named by NASA as the new home of Space Shuttle Endeavour, which completed its last mission in 2011 following a 25-year run and close to 123 million miles of space travel. Thus Endeavor’s trip to Los Angeles is considered something of a homecoming, given that the shuttle was built in Palmdale, near Los Angeles.
“The OMSF team and I are very proud to be a part of Endeavour’s historic arrival in Los Angeles,” said Aram Gharabekian, the OMSF’s artistic director and conductor. “This will be a globally significant celebration, marking the shuttle program’s extraordinary achievements, which continue to benefit all of humanity. I commend the California Science Center leadership and the cities of Los Angeles and Inglewood for their heroic efforts to bring Endeavour to California. The shuttle’s homecoming will stir deeply felt emotions and civic pride throughout our community, and we’re excited to join this celebration through the language of music.”
On September 20, Endeavor will be flown atop a modified Boeing 747 from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to LAX, where it will remain a few weeks before being transported to the California Science Center. The arrival ceremony at the airport, to be held inside an United Airlines hangar, will mark the spacecraft’s final journey.
According to a California Science Center spokesperson, the arrival ceremony will be attended by some 300 dignitaries and guests, and receive global media coverage. Highlights of the event will include a VIP reception, live feeds of Endeavour’s landing and taxiing toward the hangar (shown on Jumbotron screens), rolling of the red carpet and disembarkation of dignitaries, and speeches by various officials, all interspersed with performances featuring some 40 OMSF artists. There are also plans to film the entire event for the production of a commemorative DVD.
The OMSF is in charge of the considerable logistics of the event’s artistic program, which entails the execution of unconventional sound- and staging-design components, given the unique challenges of performing inside an airport hangar.
“We bring together talent from various nationalities, all collaborating to create great things,” said Alina Koutnouyan, the OMSF’s COO and a founding member of its Board. “Our organization is thrilled to work with the California Science Center’s visionary leadership in celebrating the enormous scientific strides achieved through the space program, and Endeavour in particular. We are very grateful for the tremendous support and encouragement we have received from the California Science Center and City of Los Angeles, various Council members, and the community at large. We look forward to a memorable welcome to Shuttle Endeavour.”
Varand Gourjian, another OMSF founding Board member and CFO, stated, “By collaborating with the California Science Center on Endeavour’s arrival ceremony, the OMSF aims to achieve an exhilarating convergence of art and science.”
On the night of October 12, Endeavour will leave LAX, arriving the next morning at Inglewood City Hall. From there the shuttle will travel through city streets to the California Science Center — the first time a spacecraft will be transported through urban roadways.
Beginning October 30, Endeavour will be on display at the California Science Center’s Samuel Oschin Space Shuttle Endeavour Display Pavilion while the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, a new addition to the Science Center, is being built. When the new wing is completed, in 2017, Endeavour will be its centerpiece, along with the shuttle’s external fuel tank and twin rocket boosters. The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will also offer an outstanding collection of aeronautic and space artifacts, immersive experiences, and hands-on exhibits, inspiring visitors to explore the scientific concepts behind aeronautics and the formation and exploration of the universe.
Lack of funding may scrub launch technology
John Kelly - Florida Today (Commentary)
It's been 10 years since the first launch of the United States' current breed of big rockets, dubbed Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles.
Lockheed Martin's Atlas V first blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in August 2002. The first of Boeing's Delta IV rockets lifted off a few months later.
After 10 years of near perfection in the delivery of important science, military and spy satellites to orbit, the program is a reliable workhorse now operated by the Boeing-Lockheed partnership known as United Launch Alliance.
In the relatively short history of the country's space launch industry, a decade is a long time to go without the development of new rocket technology. Yet a series of reports coming out of various entities within and outside the Defense Department is raising concerns that new rocket technology development has stalled, at best.
The Defense Department tells outside auditors that the budget environment of the last few years precludes it from spending money on new technology development in the launch field. Of course, the cause of the tight budgets is open for debate. Some will argue multi-billion cost overruns on other major weapons projects are to blame.
NASA is developing a new rocket, but not one based on breakthroughs in propulsion technology. Between it and the Defense Department, there are some modest (although promising) technology development projects going on. But the amounts of money and the people invested are not even one tenth of what experts say is needed.
While the national space policy and strategy documents outline a strong need for ongoing research and development in the launch technology area, the DOD says it is not a priority and increased funding is unlikely. Right now, just $8 million of the $1.7 billion dedicated to the EELV program by the government is spent on technology.
None is planned to be spent in 2014, according to multiple government reviews.
The plan ahead appears to be to get the maximum use out of the investment in the very good Atlas V and Delta IV, but extending the life of systems over multiple decades — the only plan if the nation basically stops working on new technology — is short sighted.
A side effect that aggravates the problem: As less investment in new technology happens, the country is losing critical skills in the area because the best and brightest engineers move into other fields more focused on the future.
There is a silver lining out there though. Development of new technology by private interests is continuing. Some promising innovations are coming out of companies like SpaceX and so new, evolving options may develop on their own. With SpaceX, ongoing success in the commercial cargo and commercial crew flights for NASA could greatly expand the kind of revenue stream that would foster further investment in innovation.
However, it remains a concern if the expendable launch vehicle program in the United States follows the same path as the space shuttle program, where existing vehicles and technology are stretched to serve longer while development of a replacement never gets serious attention. The result: A program reaches its inevitable end and no next generation solution is in place.
Some might argue that kind of gap is optional in the human space flight arena. I disagree. However, a capability to launch military, communications and intelligence spacecraft is not optional. Not investing in new technology to continue to advance the capability is a bad plan. I'm sure United Launch Alliance could fly the Atlas V and Delta IV for decades, safely and reliably, but let's hope that they'll be rendered obsolete by new technological leaps forward in launch system technology well before then.
Manned missions to Mars aren't just sci-fi
Louis Friedman - USA Today (Opinion)
(Friedman is executive director emeritus of The Planetary Society)
As the robot Curiosity touched down on Mars, the event was accessed via Internet by millions worldwide, witnessed by tens of thousands at live events, and highlighted in the media for days. I hope that politicians and bureaucrats got the message: Space exploration is not just valuable to scientists; it is also popular with the public who pays taxes. And why not? The exploration of Mars is not only a search for signs of alien life. It is an exploration of the human future.
Mars is the only world accessible to us beyond Earth that was once and again may be habitable. It is the laboratory in which the evolution of the human species will be tested and ultimately determined. In its atmosphere, on its surface, and through its water, we seek answers and insights about the nature, origin and evolution of life, particularly of ourselves. Contemplating Mars, we wonder: Are we alone in the universe? Where will our future lie?
In the current space program, however, it is chic to consider Mars as only one of many destinations. After all, there are six other planets, many moons and even more asteroids in our solar system, and some people dream of travel to other stars, and their planets and moons. We have been exploring robotically and remotely investigating as many other worlds as possible, and we want to continue. But for humans, we've only touched down briefly on the moon, and Mars is the only place we might repeat that triumph. Traveling to other worlds — for example, to hellishly hot Venus, or the far, cold and radiation-battered environs of Jupiter — is beyond our ability, at least for now, and I argue, forever!
Mars is not just the next or most accessible human destination, it is the ultimate one. Science-fiction literature abounds with human voyages through and beyond the solar system. But the ideas for such voyages have changed little over the past 50 years. They imagine exotic, unobtainable propulsion systems, or undefined warp drives, freezing people to wake them up in tens of thousands of years, or spaceships with anti-gravity drives supporting generations of travelers among the stars. Those ideas haven't improved or become any more realistic. Neither has real, obtainable human spaceflight technology. The life-support systems we will use for human flight over the next few decades are remarkably the same as those we used in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo era, and they will make use of capsules and heavy rockets much like those of the 1960s.
Contrast that with how far robotic spacecraft have evolved, and how information technologies have simply transformed. Any cellphone has more computing power than the earliest planetary probes or the Apollo spacecraft. Electronics and sensors keep getting smaller, while information processing and communications capabilities get greater. Small spacecraft have evolved from micro-spacecraft (10-100 kg), to nano-spacecraft (1-10kg), to pico-spacecraft (under 1 kg), and the limits are not yet known. Except for the speed of light, we don't yet know the limits for communication data rates and for information processing speed and capacity. The combined exponential reduction of electronics size and increases in information processing capabilities give us a "Moore's Law" for increasing robotics technology capability, whereas the technology predictions for transporting human spaceflight actually seem to give us an inverse Moore's Law, describing a rate of decreasing capability and longer time-scales.
Extrapolating from current robotic developments, we will have super-fast, ultra-light spacecraft propelled by lightsails that will enable interstellar travel with the human brain, but not the body. The human brain will be integrated with that of the spacecraft, utilizing advances even more profound than those in the physical and electronic technologies. Combining genetic, biological and nano-technologies in future payloads with advances in information processing, we will extend human presence into worlds much farther and faster than we now imagine. This is how humans will explore beyond Mars.
By the time human spaceflight technology is theoretically capable of journeys beyond Mars, humans in modern space systems will be virtual explorers interacting with the environments of distant worlds, but without the baggage of physical transportation or presence. This is already happening on Earth. More astronomy is now done by astronomers sitting in their offices and homes than by trooping to mountaintops to sit at a telescope. Data reach the virtual observer just milliseconds later than it would if he or she were on the mountain. An even starker example: Modern warfare, conducted more and more by telerobotics, is leaving the human warriors safe at home, as with U.S. drones in Asia and Africa.
If humans will explore the vastness of space beyond Mars virtually, why won't it be that way with Mars? Why won't humans give up exploring beyond Earth altogether? There are two simple reasons: Humankind will not leave all its eggs in one basket, where they are susceptible to extinction by asteroid impact, disease, war or environmental catastrophe. And Mars is accessible — less than one year's travel time — and with a relative abundance of water, oxygen and useful minerals within reach of humans. There's nothing else like it within billions and billions of miles.
Human travel to Mars is inevitable. Human journeys beyond Mars will be virtual. This makes Mars the ultimate destination for humans, in body at least. Once we realize that, the context of robotic missions like Spirit, Opportunity and, now, Curiosity changes. President Obama may actually understand this; he is the first president to announce that human expeditions to Mars (he said by the mid-2030s) is the goal of America's space program. The president may understand it, but his administration doesn't. It has cut out most future Mars plans in NASA. That disconnect needs fixing.
Why Space is Good Business
Christopher John Farley - Wall Street Journal
In the wake of the passing of pioneering astronaut Neil Armstrong, Neil deGrasse Tyson, author of “Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier,” tweeted that men walking on the moon was “The only positive event in the last 50 yrs for which everyone remembers where they were when it happened.”
So after Armstrong, what’s next for space exploration? The number of men who have actually walked on the moon is dwindling (only eight of the twelve who did it, all Americans, are still alive). And a human hasn’t visited the surface of the moon since Eugene Cernan in 1972. The Journal asked Tyson, an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium, to reflect on the passing of Armstrong–and the possibility of man building on his accomplishments and going to Mars. Here’s what he said, via email. Tyson’s words:
“The country needs to understand the value and role of space exploration on the urges of a nation to innovate. This cultural shift imagines a tomorrow that only creativity in science and engineering can deliver. It’s this ‘innovation nation’ that will assure a stable economic future in the 21st century. Meanwhile, for a truly space-faring nation, destination does not matter as much as the capacity to access any parts of space that science, business, national security or geopolitics mandates.”
IN STEP WITH NEIL ARMSTRONG…
To hero-astronaut Armstrong, moonwalk 'just' a job
Lisa Cornwell & Seth Borenstein - Associated Press
Neil Armstrong made "one giant leap for mankind" with a small step onto the moon.
He commanded the historic landing of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century's scientific expeditions and becoming the first man to walk on the moon.
His first words after the feat are etched in history books and the memories of the spellbound millions who heard them in a live broadcast.
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong said. He insisted later that he had said "a'' before man, but said he, too, couldn't hear it in the version that went to the world.
Armstrong, who had bypass surgery earlier this month, died Saturday at age 82 from what his family said were complications of heart procedures. His family didn't say where he died; he had lived in suburban Cincinnati.
He was "a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job," his family said in a statement.
The moonwalk marked America's victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, a 184-pound satellite that sent shock waves around the world. The accomplishment fulfilled a commitment President John F. Kennedy made for the nation to put a man on the moon before the end of 1960s.
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs.
"The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said.
In those first few moments on the moon, Armstrong stopped in what he called "a tender moment" and left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action.
Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA's forerunner and an astronaut, the modest Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamour of the space program.
"I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession."
Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley, who interviewed Armstrong for NASA's oral history project, said Armstrong fit every requirement the space agency needed for the first man to walk on moon, especially because of his engineering skills and the way he handled celebrity by shunning it.
"I think his genius was in his reclusiveness," said Brinkley. "He was the ultimate hero in an era of corruptible men."
Fellow Ohioan and astronaut John Glenn, one of Armstrong's closest friends, recalled Saturday how Armstrong was on low fuel when he finally brought the lunar module Eagle down on the Sea of Tranquility.
"That showed a dedication to what he was doing that was admirable," Glenn said.
A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama's space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasized private companies developing spaceships. He testified before Congress, and in an email to The Associated Press, Armstrong said he had "substantial reservations."
Along with more than two dozen Apollo-era veterans, he signed a letter calling the plan a "misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future."
Armstrong was among the greatest of American heroes, Obama said in a statement.
"When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable — that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible," Obama said.
Obama's Republican opponent Mitt Romney echoed those sentiments, calling Armstrong an American hero whose passion for space, science and discovery will inspire him for the rest of his life.
"With courage unmeasured and unbounded love for his country, he walked where man had never walked before. The moon will miss its first son of earth," Romney said.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recalled Armstrong's grace and humility.
"As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own," Bolden said in a statement.
Armstrong's modesty and self-effacing manner never faded.
When he appeared in Dayton in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before a packed baseball stadium. But he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon, and quickly ducked out of the spotlight.
He later joined Glenn, by then a senator, to lay wreaths on the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Glenn introduced Armstrong and noted that day was the 34th anniversary of his moonwalk.
"Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?" Armstrong quipped, as if he hadn't given it a thought.
At another joint appearance, Glenn commented: "To this day, he's the one person on earth I'm truly, truly envious of."
Armstrong's moonwalk capped a series of accomplishments that included piloting the X-15 rocket plane and making the first space docking during the Gemini 8 mission, which included a successful emergency splashdown.
In the years afterward, Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his southwestern Ohio farm. In an Australian interview earlier this year, Armstrong acknowledged that "now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things."
Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program, described him as "exceptionally brilliant" with technical matters but "rather retiring, doesn't like to be thrust into the limelight much."
The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the U.S. into space the previous month.)
"I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," Kennedy had said. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."
The end-of-decade goal was met with more than five months to spare. "Houston: Tranquility Base here," Armstrong radioed after the spacecraft settled onto the moon. "The Eagle has landed."
"Roger, Tranquility," Apollo astronaut Charles Duke radioed back from Mission Control. "We copy you on the ground. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."
The third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia 60 miles overhead while Armstrong and Aldrin went to the moon's surface.
"He was the best, and I will miss him terribly," Collins said through NASA.
In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon before the last moon mission in 1972.
For Americans, reaching the moon provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War, from strife in the Middle East, from the startling news just a few days earlier that a young woman had drowned in a car driven off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island by Sen. Edward Kennedy. The landing occurred as organizers were gearing up for Woodstock, the legendary three-day rock festival on a farm in the Catskills of New York.
Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on a farm near Wapakoneta in western Ohio. He took his first airplane ride at age 6 and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel.
As a boy, he worked at a pharmacy and took flying lessons. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's license.
Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea.
After the war, Armstrong finished his degree from Purdue and later earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.
Armstrong was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962 — the first, including Glenn, was chosen in 1959. He commanded the Gemini 8 mission in 1966, bringing back the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit.
Aldrin said he and Armstrong were not prone to free exchanges of sentiment.
"But there was that moment on the moon, a brief moment, in which we sort of looked at each other and slapped each other on the shoulder ... and said, 'We made it. Good show,' or something like that," Aldrin said.
An estimated 600 million people — a fifth of the world's population — watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.
Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerized by what they were witnessing. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to see the moonwalk.
Television-less campers in California ran to their cars to catch the word on the radio. Boy Scouts at a camp in Michigan watched on a generator-powered television supplied by a parent.
Afterward, people walked out of their homes and gazed at the moon, in awe of what they had just seen. Others peeked through telescopes in hopes of spotting the astronauts.
In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong's parents.
"You couldn't see the house for the news media," recalled John Zwez, former manager of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum. "People were pulling grass out of their front yard."
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9,000.
In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
He remained there until 1979 and during that time bought a 310-acre farm near Lebanon, where he raised cattle and corn. He stayed out of public view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches.
In 2000, when he agreed to announce the top 20 engineering achievements of the 20th Century as voted by the National Academy of Engineering, Armstrong mentioned one disappointment relating to his moonwalk.
"I can honestly say — and it's a big surprise to me — that I have never had a dream about being on the moon," he said.
From 1982 to 1992, Armstrong was chairman of Charlottesville, Va.-based Computing Technologies for Aviation Inc., a company that supplies computer information management systems for business aircraft.
He then became chairman of AIL Systems Inc., an electronic systems company in Deer Park, N.Y.
Armstrong married Carol Knight in 1999, and the couple lived in Indian Hill, a Cincinnati suburb. He had two adult sons from a previous marriage.
Armstrong's is the second death in a month of one of NASA's most visible, history-making astronauts. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died of pancreatic cancer on July 23 at age 61.
Just prior to the 50th anniversary of Glenn's orbital flight this past February, Armstrong offered high praise to the elder astronaut. Noted Armstrong in an email: "I am hoping I will be 'in his shoes' and have as much success in longevity as he has demonstrated." Glenn is 91.
At the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Saturday, visitors held a minute of silence for Armstrong.
For anyone else who wanted to remember him, his family's statement made a simple request:
"Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the 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."
Armstrong called humble hero who served country
Colleen Long - Associated Press
When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon all those years ago, he made his country believe that anything was possible with ingenuity and dedication — and in the process became one of America's greatest heroes, his friends, colleagues and admirers said Saturday after news that the former astronaut had died.
"When I think of Neil, I think of someone who for our country was dedicated enough to dare greatly," said former astronaut John Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program and was a close friend. He said Armstrong showed exemplary skill and dedication.
The idea of Armstrong as a humble pilot who served his country above all echoed around the country Saturday, by visitors to museums that fete his accomplishments and by his former NASA colleagues. Armstrong died Saturday at age 82 from complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, his family said.
In California, visitors and staff at the Griffith Observatory paused for a moment of silence. At the Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio, a black ribbon hung over a plaque of Armstrong in the museum's entryway and a U.S. flag was lowered in Armstrong's memory.
Tourist Jonathon Lack, a judge from Anchorage, Alaska, said he decided to visit the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., after hearing of Armstrong's death.
"What really hit me is that he was in his 30s when he walked on the moon," said Lack, who is 42. "That made me think about how little I've done."
He saw in Armstrong's death a reminder of an America where people dreamed big things and sought to accomplish the inconceivable.
Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th-century's scientific expeditions during the climax of a heated space race with the Soviet Union.
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs. Aldrin, who became the public face of the moon landing after shy Armstrong recoiled from the public eye, said his colleague's leap changed the world forever and became a landmark moment in human history.
"Whenever I look at the moon, it reminds me of the moment over four decades ago when I realized that even though we were farther away from Earth than two humans had ever been, we were not alone," he said. "Virtually the entire world took that memorable journey with us. I know I am joined by millions of others in mourning the passing of a true American hero and the best pilot I ever knew."
The third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship 60 miles overhead while the other two went to the surface. "He was the best, and I will miss him terribly," Collins said, according to NASA's website.
The Apollo 11 command module Columbia is on display at the Air and Space Museum, and visitors there Saturday gathered around it to remember Armstrong and his accomplishments.
Bob Behnken, the chief of the NASA Astronaut Office, said Armstrong's historic step was the reason many became astronauts.
"Neil Armstrong was a very personal inspiration to all of us within the astronaut office," he said. "The only thing that outshone his accomplishments was his humility about those accomplishments. "
Daniel Zhou, a student at Armstrong's alma mater Purdue University in Indiana and a member of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, said Saturday was sad day.
"He will always be a source of inspiration for our generation, and for the generations to come, as we ask ourselves, 'Why explore space?'" Zhou said.
At New York's Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, a 1960 photo of Armstrong hangs near the space shuttle Enterprise — showing a youthful NASA pilot standing and smiling next to the X-15 rocket plane he was testing.
On Saturday afternoon, many among the hundreds of visitors filing past the mammoth white display didn't know he had died.
'I'm shocked!" said Dennis McKowan, 49, a computer network engineer from Sunnyvale, Calif., on a business trip to New York. "I used to skip school to watch the Apollo launches."
He was a child when he watched the moon landing.
"How do you top that? No one has gone farther yet."
In Just 'One Small Step' Armstrong Became An Icon
Allison Keyes - National Public Radio
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=160059467&m=160059522
It was the kind of history that ignites the imagination of humanity.
On July 20, 1969, hundreds of millions of people around the world watched or listened as the lunar module Eagle carried astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the moon. Armstrong got on the radio to let them know "the Eagle has landed."
Almost seven hours later, Armstrong stepped off the ladder in his bulky white space suitand said those famous words: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind"
Astronaut Alan Bean became the fourth person to walk on the moon in November of 1969. He says Armstrong hadn't thought a lot about his historic words because he wasn't sure the landing would be successful.
"Neil thought he had about a 90 percent chance of getting back alive — that was a guess," Bean says. "But he thought he only had about a 50 percent chance of making a landing and that's why he says, and I believe him, that he didn't spend a lot of time thinking about what his first words would be."
Bean says a number of astronauts could have done the mission as well as Armstrong, but he's not sure how many could have dealt with the aftermath with such humility.
Astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who piloted the lunar module in March of 1969, says Armstrong had a great sense of humor.
"Not a lot of people were aware of [it], but he was a very modest and gracious person," Schweickart says.
Neil Alden Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, and had been fascinated by flying since his first airplane ride as a 6-year-old boy in Ohio. He earned his pilot's license before his driver's license, and by the age of 16 was not only flying airplanes but also experimenting with a wind tunnel in his basement.
Armstrong earned a Navy scholarship to Purdue University, but was called to active duty and flew 78 combat missions in Korea. He became a test pilot for the forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and was accepted into the second group of astronauts.
Armstrong made his first spaceflight in 1966, and just three years later, took humanity's first steps on the moon.
"Landing on the moon was a dream that millions of kids have had for hundreds of years," Schweickart says, "and Neil was lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time."
But Armstrong — a quiet man who valued his privacy — left NASA in 1971 and moved his family back to Ohio, where for a time he was a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
Roger Launius, the senior curator in space history at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, says Armstrong wanted to be remembered as a good engineer and a good research pilot.
"He could have done anything, and gone anywhere, made tons of money [and] done very high-profile sorts of activities," Launius says. "What he chose to do was go to work as a university professor and teach engineering. Can you imagine taking your Engineering 101 class from Neil Armstrong?"
In a 2009 appearance at the National Press Club, Armstrong displayed his sense of humor as he was asked whether he had dreams about being on the moon.
"I can honestly say, and it's a great surprise to me, that I have never had a dream about being on the moon," he said to a laughing crowd. "It's a great disappointment to me even more than to you."
A crater on the moon is named after the former astronaut, a hero to many around the world. But perhaps Schweickart says it best: "He was a symbol of what humanity can do when it sets its mind to it."
Buzz Aldrin: Neil Armstrong Was ‘The Best Pilot I Ever Knew’
Taylor Dinerman - The Daily Beast
From the point of view of America's politicians, the most significant thing about Neil Armstrong was that on July 20, 1969, when he became the first man to set foot on the moon, he was a civilian. Unlike his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, Armstrong was not a military officer assigned to NASA. It would have been too much of a contradiction if the lunar plaque signed by Richard Nixon, which read in part, "We came in peace for all mankind" was put in place by a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel or a Navy commander.
It was not that Armstrong had never served in the military. As a naval aviator during the Korean War, he'd flown F9F Panther fighter-bombers from an aircraft carrier off the coast of North Korea. In the course of five combat tours he earned a reputation as one of the best pilots in the Navy.
But he quit the Navy after graduating from Purdue, becoming a full-time civilian researcher and test pilot, first at the Lewis National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) center outside Cleveland, Ohio (now called NASA Glenn), and later out of the legendary Edwards Air Force Base in the California high desert. There, Armstrong became famous for flying the dangerous and temperamental X-15 rocket plane. His March 1962 X-15 flight took him up to 207,000 feet in altitude. Not quite high enough to earn one's astronaut wings, but a remarkable feat.
Inside the small world of military aviation, his exploits as a test pilot are still spoken of with awe. One of the stories that is told is that after landing a plane in the desert after its engines had both failed, Armstrong was rolling to a stop when he saw an obstacle that he was about to crash into. According to the legend, he used his speed and the flaps and rudders of his aircraft to force the plane up onto one wheel and, like a movie stunt driver, swerved around the obstacle precariously balanced on a single bit of rubber.
Other stories tell of his close calls and the controversial landing he made on what was supposed to be a dry lake bed in Nevada. In fact, it was a bit too muddy to hold up the weight of the two-seat T-33 training jet he was flying, and its wheels sank into the mud, apparently much to the amusement of his passenger, Chuck Yeager.
His skill as a research and test pilot certainly impressed Buzz Aldrin. Armstrong was “the best pilot I ever knew,” Aldrin said in an interview with The Daily Beast shortly after his former colleague’s death. That is high praise indeed coming from a man who had flown F-86 jet fighters in combat in Korea and who has his own impressive set of flying and technical academic credentials. Armstrong's ability to memorize the smallest engineering detail and to be able to explain, in even more detail, the intricate working of any aircraft he tested made him the outstanding test pilot of his generation. To this day, within military aviation, he is famous for his "steel trap" mind and his unflappable demeanor.
He joined the NASA astronaut corps in September 1962, a bit more than a year after President Kennedy had committed America "within this decade" to "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” Armstrong entered astronaut training confident of his abilities; as he told his biographer James Hansen, he had "worked actively with the guys in the simulator lab constructing simulations to try and investigate problems."
Since the Apollo project involved doing things that had never been done before—landing a rocket-powered vehicle on the moon, to be precise—learning how to simulate unprecedented maneuvers was essential. Intense and repeated training in high fidelity simulators has always characterized preparation for manned spaceflight, especially at NASA. Armstrong was not only able to take full advantage of this training, but helped establish the tradition that NASA astronauts will always be superbly well prepared for their missions.
His first spaceflight was the Gemini VIII mission flown in March 1966 with his partner David Scott. The mission included America's second spacewalk and the first rendezvous and docking maneuver, an essential spaceflight technique not only for the Apollo missions but for almost all subsequent space operations. For example, the International Space Station could never have been built without using the techniques Neil Armstrong helped pioneer on the Gemini VIII mission.
While the NASA program recovered from the January 1967 Apollo 1 disaster that killed Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White, Armstrong was hard at work helping develop the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle. This was a weird-looking, dangerous jet- and rocket-powered contraption, sometimes called the flying bedstead. According to Buzz Aldrin, it was used to train Apollo mission commanders in the piloting skills they would need to land on the lunar surface. Armstrong was flying one on May 6, 1968 when it crashed. Armstrong ejected and parachuted to safety. According to one source, he walked away without a drop of sweat on him; behind his eyes the pilots and technicians could almost see him calculating and figuring exactly what had caused the explosion. Thanks to Armstrong's ability as an engineer, the problem (a faulty thruster) was quickly identified and repaired and training for the lunar landing was quickly resumed.
The choice of the Apollo 11 crew was partly predetermined by the fact that Aldrin and Armstrong had trained together as backup for a previous mission. Once Armstrong had been picked to be the commander, he quickly decided that he wanted Aldrin in the lunar module with him and that Mike Collins would be the best man for the job of commanding the Apollo capsule itself.
Together, on July 16, 1969, they rode the giant Saturn V into orbit, flawlessly connected their capsule to the lunar lander, and rocketed out of Earth’s orbit heading for the moon. Arriving in orbit around the moon, Armstrong and Aldrin in the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) detached from Collins in the Apollo capsule and began the nerve-wracking descent towards the moon's surface.
Armstrong flew the LEM while Aldrin manned the primitive flight computer. As Buzz Aldrin explained, "At 500 feet the commander [Armstrong] took over manual control to get a feel for what the spacecraft was like before going for the landing." Armstrong made a few last-second maneuvers to avoid some dangerous rocks and successfully landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. All the hard years of training, education, and experience had paid off; Armstrong had made it look easy.
Notoriously, as he stepped onto the moon Armstrong intended to say, "It's a small step for a man, a giant leap for mankind." Instead he pronounced the now immortal, but grammatically infelicitous words, "It's a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind."
They returned to Earth and entered immediately into a twilight realm, somewhere between myth and history.
It was not until 1979, when Tom Wolfe published The Right Stuff, that people outside the tight fraternity of military pilots understood just what the Apollo program had meant to the men who flew the missions. "A career in flying was like climbing one of those ancient Babylonian pyramids made up of a dizzy progression of steps and ledges, a ziggurat, a pyramid extraordinarily high and steep; and the idea was to prove at every foot of the way up that you were one of the elected and anointed ones who had the right stuff and could move higher and higher and even—ultimately, God willing one day—that you might be able to join that special few at the very top, that elite who had the capacity to bring tears to men's eyes. The very brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself. "
No one ever said it out loud, but it became obvious that at the very top of the ziggurat stood a modest, smiling, engineer from Ohio: Neil Armstrong.
In an age when flying largely consists of programming computers and when the end of manned combat flying is one or two decades away or maybe less, Neil Armstrong's place at the very top of the ziggurat is secure, forever.
Neil Armstrong’s television exit almost as quiet as his life
Associated Press
By the yardstick of history, Neil Armstrong was among the most accomplished men ever to walk on the planet that he looked upon from afar one magical week in July 1969.
Television news didn’t seem to fully recognize the importance of the first human to walk on the moon on the weekend he died.
In the hours after Armstrong’s death was announced, news networks were airing canned programming — jailhouse documentaries, a rerun interview with Rielle Hunter, Mike Huckabee’s weekend show. Menacing satellite pictures of Tropical Storm Isaac had much more air time than Armstrong’s dusty hops on the lunar surface. Talk of the upcoming GOP national convention sucked up the air.
A trio of factors played in to the lack of attention.
First, Armstrong died in Cincinnati on a Saturday. Not just any Saturday, when news organizations have a skeletal staff, but a late August weekend. Half the country is at the beach. It’s not a stretch to think inexperience on duty might have played a role in NBC News’ embarrassing gaffe: a website headline that read: “Astronaut Neil Young, first man to walk on the moon, dies at age 82.” (NBC called it a staffer error and said the mistake was taken down after seven minutes.)
His death came as somewhat of a surprise, too. Everyone dies, of course, and most news organizations have prepared material on hand to mark the passing of famous people. In many cases, though, there is advance word that someone is very ill, giving the media a chance to prepare and plan.
Armstrong’s determined effort to live a quiet, private life after his astronaut days also left TV at a disadvantage. There was relatively little tape on hand to roll from interviews reminiscing about his experiences, reunions with old astronauts or public appearances. No Armstrong chats with David Letterman. No appearances in music videos. There was the moon walk, and not much else.
Notable deaths often give viewers the chance to reflect, to put into perspective lives of great accomplishment or great notoriety.
Not so with Neil Armstrong. His death was like his life: strangely muted given the magnitude of his achievements.
Neil Armstrong: 'Diffident' emissary of mankind
Paul Rincon - BBC News
Neil Armstrong was a towering, if not mythical, figure in the world of spaceflight.
As the world sat awestruck in front of their television sets, marveling at the achievement of sending an emissary to the surface of another world, he was one man and every man.
As President Nixon's plaque on the lunar module proclaimed: "We came in peace for all mankind".
Armstrong's simple yet brilliant refrain about small steps and giant leaps - its intonation betraying such acute awareness of the historic nature of the moment - remains forever etched into the minds of a generation who witnessed the moon landings first hand.
And there is the sadness, since, for those who dreamt that Apollo 11 was the beginning of a grand adventure, in which humankind would reach out to become an interplanetary species, Armstrong's passing reminds us just how distant those past glories are, and just how far away we are from achieving anything like it again.
Cool under pressure
Nevertheless, the achievement of Apollo 11 brought an end to the space race, thus paving the way for global co-operation. It led first to the baby steps of the Apollo-Soyuz project in the 1970s and eventually to the landmark International Space Station.
That, however, must have been far from the minds of Armstrong and crew members Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins, when they returned from the Moon in 1969 as heroes.
After smiling and waving through the ticker tape parades, public audiences and television interviews, Armstrong stepped out of the spotlight and tried to rediscover the obscurity from which he had emerged.
He had further cemented his already legendary reputation for being cool under pressure during the first Moon landing on 20 July 1969 when it became clear that the guidance issued by Nasa to the crew would have sent them into a field of boulders.
Armstrong had taken over manual control, flying the spindly lunar module "like a helicopter" to avoid the death trap and found a safe place to put down with 20 seconds of fuel left.
But the steely-eyed former fighter pilot was also painfully shy. He retired from Nasa in 1971 to accept a teaching post at the University of Cincinnati.
Trading the world stage for the more sedate pace of life in an Ohio farming community made perfect sense for this man of few words, who sought only to serve his country: "I don't want to be a living memorial," he once said.
Former BBC aerospace correspondent Reg Turnill elaborated: "Armstrong was a very diffident and reclusive man. He got tired of being asked: 'What was it like being the first man on the Moon?' and he stopped doing interviews. Of all the astronauts he was the most reclusive. He was a boffin."
But even in rural Ohio, Armstrong was never quite able to escape attention. In 2005, the astronaut threatened to sue a barbershop owner who had sold trimmings of his hair for $3,000.
Mr Armstrong's family released a statement expressing their heartbreak at the passing of a " loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend".
"Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job," they said, adding, "as much as Neil cherished his privacy, he always appreciated the expressions of good will from people around the world and from all walks of life."
Buzz Aldrin, who accompanied him to the lunar surface, also paid tribute, telling the BBC World Service's Newshour: "We will miss a great spokesman and leader in the space programme."
Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins commented simply: "He was the best, and I will miss him terribly."
President Obama paid tribute to a "hero not just of his time, but of all time", and fellow astronaut and Nasa administrator Charles Bolden said: "As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind's first small step on a world beyond our own."
'Boyhood wonder'
Armstrong occasionally gave public addresses as an advocate of human spaceflight, but generally steered away from making pronouncements on space policy.
However, the Apollo 11 commander memorably spoke out against Barack Obama's cancellation of the Constellation plan to return humans to the Moon by the early 2020s.
Speaking at a Senate hearing in 2010, Armstrong warned Congress: "America is respected for the contributions it has made in learning to sail on this new ocean. If the leadership we have acquired, through our investment, is simply allowed to fade away, other nations will surely step in where we have faltered."
Those views are common among other astronauts of his generation, who have expressed dismay at the thought of the US ceding a pre-eminent position in space won through grit, determination, imagination and blood, to emerging space powers such as China.
The Asian superpower recently outlined its own plans to put humans on the Moon in the 2020s. And though a former administrator of Nasa once told me that "you can only be first to the Moon once", the announcement by China will rankle with those who lament that America's glories in space now belong to another era.
In a rare interview, Armstrong gave almost an hour of his time this year in a video conversation with the Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia (CPA).
He repeated his criticisms of the current direction of the US human spaceflight programme, saying it lacked ambition compared with the big thinking of the 1960s.
But the interview also provided a rare insight into the mind of this most private of history-makers. In it, Armstrong described how he had become fascinated with flight as an elementary school student, and determined that, "somehow, I wanted to be involved in that".
President John F Kennedy's speech at Rice University in 1961, which laid down the gauntlet for a landing on the Moon, seemed a daunting challenge at the time, especially when the US had only sent Alan Shepard on a 20-minute sub-orbital flight.
"Now the president was challenging us to go to the Moon," he said. "The gap between a 20 minutes up and down flight and going to the moon was something almost beyond belief, technically."
He also revealed that, to his mind, touching down safely on the Moon had been far from certain: "I thought we had a 90% chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt."
Despite the ups and downs at Nasa, Armstrong remained optimistic about the future of human spaceflight, once telling the BBC's Pallab Ghosh that: "The dream remains! The reality has faded a bit, but it will come back, in time."
In their statement, Armstrong's family talk of a man who never lost his "boyhood wonder" at the pursuits of aviation and spaceflight, adding: "For those who may ask what they can do to honour Neil, we have a simple request. Honour his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the 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."
The small step for Neil Armstrong was a giant blow to the Soviet Union
Paul Koring - Globe and Mail
Watching the bubble-helmeted, space-suited Neil Armstrong bounce carefully across the moon’s dusty, airless surface – a historic moment seen live by 600 million people on grainy black-and-white television screens – was mankind’s first globally shared experience.
But the nerve-wracking thrill shared by one-fifth of the planet’s population in 1969 – including tens of thousands who bought their first TV especially to witness the moon landing – was less a “giant leap for mankind” than a U.S. hammer-blow to the Soviet Union and a tipping point in the Cold War from which Moscow’s Communists never recovered. Mr. Armstrong died this weekend at 82, but the legacy of his moon landing lives on.
Mankind, even Americans, soon lost interest in tramping on the moon. Three years and five more moon landings later, barely anyone watched, let alone cared, when the Apollo program was prematurely scrapped in 1972. Man hasn’t gone anywhere beyond low-Earth orbit in the 43 years since. But the 1969 landing was the culmination of a decade-long space race against the Soviet Union. Apollo 11 ended it with a triumphant, convincing victory for the United States, making good on the gauntlet riskily thrown down by then-president John F. Kennedy in May of 1961.
Mr. Kennedy’s speech was a hasty response to Americans shaken by the Soviets’ successful launch of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space who orbited the Earth high above the United States and – fleetingly – making good on Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s vow to “catch up and overtake” the capitalist West. The Soviet cosmonaut’s globe-girdling ride had stunned the United States, even more than Sputnik’s first foray into space four years earlier. It was yet another in a series of Soviet space triumphs.
So, even as U.S. rockets were routinely exploding before launch, Mr. Kennedy pledged America “to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.”
Astronauts and cosmonauts became gladiators in the monstrously expensive high-risk race. In the United States, they were glamorous, gracing the cover of Life magazine, racing across the country in a special fleet of single-seater jets, carousing with space groupies in shabby hotels near Cape Canaveral and – most of all – being blasted into orbit atop giant, fire-belching missiles.
Famously captured in Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff , U.S. astronauts were the ultimate Cold Warriors and when Mr. Armstrong planted the Stars and Stripes on the moon, he drove a dagger into the Soviets’ over-hyped claims of the inevitable triumph of “modern socialist man.”
Instead, after suffering repeated and catastrophic failures – some kept secret for decades – Moscow abandoned its manned-moon mission program within a year of the 1969 American landing. Russia toyed with ambitious plans for a manned fly-by of Mars to trump the U.S. victory in the moon race but they too were abandoned. Soviet rocket technology did not have the hardware to deliver and the Soviet economy could not generate the money.
Mr. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who shared the tiny lunar lander in its harrowing ride to the boulder-strewn surface, left a plaque on the moon. “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
But it was fond sentiment rather than geopolitical reality. In all, a dozen men landed on the moon. All were American, all but one a serving or former U.S. military officer. There was nothing international about the Apollo effort. It was in-your-face Cold War rivalry and NASA, technically a civilian agency, shared facilities, expertise and personnel with the U.S. military space program
Despite proxy wars and rhetoric, the Soviet Union never again successfully challenged the United States. Out-spent, out-engineered and out-romanced, the Soviet losses in the space race were harbingers of larger, more sweeping economic and political failures. Two decades after the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 heralded the fall of the Iron Curtain. Two years later the Soviet empire collapsed.
Nor was there anything ambiguous about the Americans beating the Soviets to the moon. Unlike the Berlin blockade and airlift 20 years earlier or the 1962 Cuban missile crisis – where, in both crises, the status-quo ante eventually prevailed – the Apollo astronauts hopping like slow-motion kangaroos on the low-gravity moon eventually driving golf-cart sized buggies and blasting golf shots pointedly rubbed Soviet faces in lunar dust.
The world watched. One superpower had won; the other lost.
For all the billing of a “giant leap for mankind,” and the bags of space rocks, the moon race wasn’t about science or shared endeavour. It was a contest, a deadly serious game played out with multistage rockets evolved from the same intercontinental ballistic missiles poised to obliterate the planet in mutually-assured destruction.
Decades later, manned space exploration is all but dead.
China, a non-player in the 1960s but now a would-be superpower, has launched a modest manned space program with a vague plan for a manned-moon mission. Successive U.S. presidents talk vaguely – and without committing the hundreds of billions needed – to return to the moon as a stepping stone to more ambitious manned missions to Mars.
But human space-faring has none of the urgency, romance or drama of the 1960s.
Instead, unmanned missions – like the SUV-sized Curiosity rover – that landed successfully on Mars shortly before Mr. Armstrong’s death, promise far more science at far less risk and cost, mostly because there’s no need to keep humans alive or bring them back.
Armstrong: a never-read eulogy recalls danger of his feat
Laura Nelson - Los Angeles Times
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.”
The Right Man
Humble Neil Armstrong was the perfect choice for his moon mission
Wall Street Journal
Even in the current age of constant electronic wizardry, Neil Armstrong's 1969 walk on the moon remains a moment of incomparable magic. For those who saw it, not on YouTube but as it happened, the moment will last a lifetime.
Technology and engineering science were not then the lingua franca of daily life that they are now. People watched the moonwalk on bulky television sets, often in black and white. No matter. Seeing Neil Armstrong in his puffy white astronaut's suit descend from the lunar vehicle to touch his foot to the moon's surface was transcendent. Uncounted numbers of Americans and earthlings elsewhere went outside later, stared up at the familiar milky globe in the darkness and marveled in pride and awe.
As the first human to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong bore a heavy load. One shudders to think what the pressure on him would be like now in our celebritized age. Armstrong was the right man for a larger-than-life experience. He was the consummate professional engineer, a self-described geek, who always said that his achievement was the product of many minds and strong wills. He was instinctively self-effacing, as his recollections nearby show. If he receded from public view after Apollo 11, it was to minimize any chance that history's focus would shift away from NASA's achievement on that mission.
Whether the United States and NASA should again attempt similar feats in space is a subject for another time. Suffice to say that Neil Armstrong and his Apollo 11 colleagues, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, had the great fortune to be part of one of those rare, exhilarating episodes of teamwork and genius available to the few but an inspiration to all.
This is a moment when some are inclined to say, "They don't make them like that anymore." But they do still make them like that, if only we have the wit to find and support them. Neil Armstrong's death at age 82 is an occasion to elevate again in the public eye the personal values that he represented—excellence, fortitude, worthy dreams and personal humility.
Neil Armstrong's Immortal Footprint
Larry Bell - Forbes
Neil Armstrong has now been inducted into history’s loftiest celestial ranks. He is greatly honored not only for what he accomplished, but fundamentally because of the inspirational spirit of exceptionalism he exemplified after America’s psyche was badly jolted by unexpected Cold War events. Those shock waves began on October 4, 1957 when a tiny Soviet satellite chirped alarming evidence of technological superiority. Then, only one year later, a young cosmonaut named Yuri Gagarin leant his human face to a new extraterrestrial space era that threatened to leave the U.S. behind.
America immediately responded. On May 25, 1961, only a few weeks after Gagarin’s orbital flight, President John Kennedy upped the ante, committing the U.S. to send a man to the moon and return him safely before the end of that decade. He rallied the country to that cause, saying: “…no single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish…in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon–if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.”
And the remarkable clincher: “Let it be clear–and this is a judgment which the Members of the Congress must finally make–let it be clear that I am asking the Congress and the country to accept a firm commitment to a new course of action, a course which will last for many years and carry very heavy costs…If we are to go only half way, or reduce our sights in the face of difficulty, in my judgment it would be better not to go at all.”
We did that, and even better…. putting four of our citizens on the lunar surface and returning them by 1969, plus delivered two more into lunar orbit who returned with them. Within three more years, eight others had walked on the moon on successful round-trip voyages, along with four more orbital companions. Some of those same Apollo astronauts, and many daring predecessors, literally blazed that pathway. They flew on two suborbital and four Earth-orbital Mercury launches, nine Earth-orbital Gemini flights, two Earth-orbital Apollo tests, and two lunar-orbital tests that made those lunar surface landings possible.
That historic Apollo 11 landing wasn’t Neil’s first space cowboy rodeo. As Gemini 8 Command Pilot, his March 16, 1966 mission with Pilot David Scott entailed complex rendezvous and docking maneuvers with an unmanned Agena target vehicle which ultimately required recovery from a harrowing, out-of-control spacecraft roll. As NASA Flight Director Gene Krantz later reported, “…the mission planners and controllers had failed to realize that when two spacecraft are docked together, they must be considered one spacecraft.”
Neil Armstrong’s story confirms opportunities for common citizens to realize uncommon goals in America. Born in Wapakoneta, Ohio on August 5, 1930, an early fascination with aviation began when, at the age of two, his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races. He experienced his first airplane flight in a Ford Tri-motor “Tin Goose” four years later. By age 15 he had earned a pilot flight certificate. That was before he had a driver’s license.
In 1947 Neil enrolled in aerospace engineering at Purdue University as the second member of his family to attend college. He had also been accepted to MIT, but decided that it wasn’t necessary to go all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts to get a good education. Under conditions of a scholarship requirement, he interrupted his study after two years to serve three years in the U.S. Navy, returning to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955. He then went on to acquire a Master of Science in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California in 1970.
Arriving for about 18 months of flight training at the Pensacola Naval Air Station on January 26, 1949, Neil became qualified as a Naval Aviator for carrier landings two weeks after his 20th birthday. He was soon assigned to an all-jet squadron, making his first flight in an F9F-2B Panther on January 5, 1951. Six months later he achieved his first jet carrier landing on the USS Essex which then set sail for Korea.
Neil’s F9F Panther was hit by anti-aircraft fire while making a low bombing run at about 350 mph near Wonsan. While attempting to regain control, his aircraft collided with a 20 foot high pole that sliced off about three feet of his right wing. Although he managed to fly back to friendly territory, he was forced to eject over an airfield near Pohang where he was picked up in a jeep driven by his flight school roommate. Following 78 Korean missions with 121 hours in the air, Neil received the Air Medal for 20 combat missions, a gold Star for another 20, and the Korean Service Medal.
After returning and graduating from Purdue, Neil applied to become a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base. Since they had no open positions, they forwarded his application to the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland where he began working in March 1955. Four months later, a position at Edwards opened up, and he took it. His first rocket plane flight in the Bell X-1B experienced a nose gear failure on landing. He later flew the North American X-15 seven times, ultimately reaching an altitude of 207,500 feet.
Neil’s X-15 incidents are legendary. On an April 20, 1962 flight achieving an altitude of 207,000 feet, he held the nose up too long during descent, causing the craft to bounce off the atmosphere back up to 140,000 feet. This caused him to wind up flying 40 miles past the landing field at Mach 3 (2,000 mph) before turning back, and only narrowly miss some trees. Then, four days later, flying touch-and-go landings in a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star with Chuck Yeager, the wheels became stuck in a lake bed made wet by recent rain where they had to await rescue.
On still another occasion, Neil misjudged his altitude in a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter during emergency landing tests, also not realizing that his landing gear wasn’t fully extended. Then, as he touched down the gear began to retract. He applied full power to abort the landing, but the vertical fin and landing gear door struck the ground, releasing hydraulic fluid… which, in turn, caused the tail-hook to deploy. Upon returning to base and landing, he caught an arresting wire attached to an anchor chain, dragging it along the runway.
In 1958 Neil Armstrong was selected for the U.S. Air Force’s “Man in Space Soonest” program, and in November 1960 was chosen as part of a consultant group for Boeing’s X-20 Dyna-Soar military space plane. In March 1962 he was named to be one of six pilot-engineers who would be first to fly it.
At that time NASA was seeking applications for a second group of astronauts for the Apollo program. Although Neil’s submittal arrived about a week after the June 1, 1962 deadline, Dick Day, who had worked closely with him at Edwards, reportedly slipped his late application into the pile before anyone noticed. Deke Slayton contacted Neil on September 13, asking him if he would be interested in joining the NASA Astronaut Corps as part of what the press dubbed “New Nine”. The rest is history.
Neil Armstrong was an ardent adventurer and a reluctant hero. He never sought the celebrity he would win, or the honors a grateful nation bestowed upon him: the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, or the Congressional Gold Medal to name but a few. Instead, he returned back from space to devote his life to a more personal American dream of husband, father, university professor and professional service. He served on the boards of several companies, including Marathon Oil, Learjet, Cinergy, Taft Broadcasting, United Airlines, Eaton Corporation, AIL Systems, Thiokol, and Space Industries International, a company that I co-founded. He also served on the Rogers Commission which investigated causes behind the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy.
During his later years, a growing concern about his country’s continuing leadership in space sufficiently overcame his strongly private nature to become an outspoken proponent for returning Americans back to the moon. Speaking to a Congressional House committee in 2010 he observed: “…after all, they say we have already been there. I find that mystifying. It would be as if 16th-century monarchs proclaimed that we need not go to the New World, we have already been there?”
Last February he spoke at an Ohio State University event honoring the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s history-making spaceflight. In May he joined with Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, to support the opening of a new National Flight Academy that will teach math and science to young people through an aviation-oriented camp.
Eternal imprints of Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, along with footprints left by Buzz Aldrin and other brave members of his elite group, are now immortalized in a very special place in our human experience. They, and those who provided the roadmaps and means, inspired us to realize that with courage, dedication and education, worthwhile, ambitious dreams simply await action. Let their example and lesson never be forgotten.
Armstrong’s America
Small-town boy on moon
Arthur Herman - New York Post
Most of the commentary about Neil Armstrong’s death on Saturday celebrated his being the first man on the moon, and rightly so. I’d like to remember him, however, for what he did right here on earth. His life and character embodied key virtues of our culture that made this country great, and can do so again — if we just believe in and embrace them the way Neil Armstrong did.
First, there were the traditional small-town virtues of the Ohio town where he was born in 1930 and raised. That was where his father followed the career that’s the butt of every late night comedian, as an accountant, and Neil became what every liberal activist now despises, an Eagle Scout. But small-town didn’t mean small horizons then any more than it does now. Neil’s greatest dream was to fly, and he earned his pilot’s license before he learned how to drive.
Then there was the United States Navy, where Neil trained as an aviator and flew 78 combat missions in the Korean War. He always said those missions were far more dangerous than anything he did as an astronaut or test pilot; they were certainly more important in terms of shaping his outlook on life. The Navy taught him the importance of friendship, but also the discipline to deal with the pain when those friends crash and die. Combat “builds a lot of character,” he once told an Australian interviewer. “It builds a lot of backbone.”
It certainly did. Later when he learned people were hawking his autographs for money, he stopped signing them. When he learned his barber had sold a snippet of his hair for $3,000, he threatened to sue unless the barber gave the money away to charity (the barber did).
Neil Armstrong knew there were more important things to life than being liked. Today, of course, we live surrounded by a media bubble that teaches the opposite. It’s the same bubble where character gets washed away with the semen stains on the Oval Office rug, that teaches our kids that what they feel is more important than what they know and says image always trumps reality.
But as an engineer, Neil Armstrong knew that reality can’t be Photoshopped or mouse-clicked away. It has to be confronted, and reason is our God-given tool for dealing with it. More than once as a test pilot and astronaut he had to make split-second decisions on which his life and the lives of others depended, as when he had to override the auto-pilot on the Apollo 11 lunar module before it dumped him and Buzz Aldrin in a field of boulders.
In those moments, asking “will this work?” becomes more important than, “How does it make me feel?” It’s a brand of Stoicism that’s out of favor today. Neil Armstrong wouldn’t have made a very good guest on Oprah. But it did make him the perfect person to travel to the moon with.
And Neil Armstrong was confident that someday, despite the end of NASA’s manned space flights, someone would “fly back up there and pick up that camera I left there.” Everyone who met him was always struck by the same thing, his humility. I think it was because he knew that he was no TV image Superhero. Behind all his amazing feats was something greater, an America that believed in character over celebrity, in accomplishment over image and solving problems instead of blaming someone else.
That was the America that made him who he was and put him on the moon. Today, in the age of the Kardashians and Desperate Housewives, many Americans despair of ever getting it back. But the truth is, it never went away. It’s still there, waiting. Like Neil’s camera, we just have to go pick it up where he left it.
The Cold War Push Behind Neil Armstrong’s ‘One Small Step’
Andrew Revkin - New York Times (Opinion)
I was saddened to learn of the death of NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, whose “one small step” so fixated my generation (I was born in 1956). The video above provides an unusual split-screen view of Armstrong’s hop from the lunar module landing gear to the dusty lunar surface.
The Apollo missions were utterly captivating for young science buffs like me (and my brother, whose room often smelled of glue as he assembled detailed spacecraft models). To review that era, start with the great “Mission to the Moon” interactive video feature produced by The Times.
While I’ve interviewed all kinds of luminaries in 30 years as a journalist, I still feel a particular sense of honor when I call up Rusty Schweickart, an Apollo 9 astronaut whose prime concern these days is helping humans develop the capacity to detect and deflect asteroids that might hit the Earth.
It’s easy to forget that for young people these days, the space race is somewhat mysterious, particularly now that manned missions beyond Earth orbit are a thing of the past — at least for the time being. By chance, just yesterday my 14-year-old son, Jack, asked me a powerful and important question about the moon missions.
He was flipping through “Paper Astronaut: The Paper Spacecraft Mission Manual” and asked: “Would we have gone to the Moon if there hadn’t been a cold war?” My gut answer was “no.” But today I did a bit of homework and here’s what I found:
Tapes and transcripts released last year by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library provide some detail on the political and geopolitical context, as summarized here by About.com:
Recently released audio recordings from the Kennedy White House reveal that politics, more than science, may have fueled America’s race to the moon against the Soviets.
The 73-minute tape, recently released by the John F. Kennedy Library, records a meeting between President Kennedy, NASA Administrator James Webb, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and others in the Cabinet Room of the White House on November 21, 1962.
The discussion reveals a president who felt landing men on the moon should be NASA’s top priority and a NASA chief who did not. When asked by Kennedy if he considered the moon landing to be NASA’s top priority, Webb responded, “No sir, I do not. I think it is one of the top priority programs.”
Kennedy then urges Webb to adjust his priorities because, “This is important for political reasons, international political reasons. This is, whether we like it or not, an intensive race.”
The worlds of politics and science were suddenly at odds. Webb told Kennedy that NASA scientists still had grave doubts about the survivability of a moon landing. “We don’t know anything about the surface of the moon,” he states, going on to suggest that only through a careful, comprehensive and scientific approach to manned exploration could the U.S. gain “pre-eminence in space.”
More excerpts can be read at the presidential library Web site.
Also read Bill Broad’s 2007 feature in a special Science Times section on the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, “From the Start, the Space Race Was an Arms Race.”
After reviewing this and other background, I’d stick with my gut hunch.
This doesn’t take away from the breathtaking nature of the Apollo astronauts’ achievements and our species’ other activities on the edge of the possible. And the cold war produced a host of incredible breakthroughs in other areas of science and technology.
But it does reinforce the picture of a species that, for the most part, doesn’t undertake dramatic, sustained and costly ventures without a near-term, practical imperative at the root.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment