Please keep Neil’s family in your prayers at this sad time of loss.
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."
NEWS SPECIAL – Neil Alden Armstrong
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed…That's one small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind.”
- Neil A. Armstrong
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, passes away
William Harwood - CBS News
Neil Alden Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and an enduring icon of the space age for taking "one giant leap for mankind," died Saturday after complications from cardiovascular surgery. He was 82. "We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away," his family said in a statement. "Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend.
Made ‘Giant Leap’ as First Man to Step on Moon
John Noble Wilford - New York Times
Neil Armstrong, who made the “giant leap for mankind” as the first human to set foot on the moon, died on Saturday. He was 82. His family said in a statement that the cause was “complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.” He had undergone heart bypass surgery this month in Cincinnati, near where he lived. His recovery had been going well, according to those who spoke with him after the surgery, and his death came as a surprise to many close to him, including his fellow Apollo astronauts. The family did not say where he died. A quiet, private man, at heart an engineer and crack test pilot, Mr. Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, as the commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the mission that culminated the Soviet-American space race in the 1960s.
Neil Armstrong, first man to step on the moon, dies at 82
Paul Duggan - Washington Post
Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who marked an epochal achievement in exploration with “one small step” from the Apollo 11 lunar module on July 20, 1969, becoming the first person to walk on the moon, died Aug. 25 in the Cincinnati area. He was 82. His family announced the death in a statement and attributed it to “complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.” A taciturn engineer and test pilot who was never at ease with his fame, Mr. Armstrong was among the most heroized Americans of the 1960s Cold War space race. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” he is famous for saying as he stepped on the moon, an indelible quotation beamed to a worldwide audience in the hundreds of millions.
Neil Armstrong, first person to walk on moon, dies at 82
Valerie Nelson & Eric Malnic - Los Angeles Times
When Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon, on July 20, 1969, he uttered a phrase that has been carved in stone and quoted across the planet: "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind." The grainy black-and-white television images of him taking his first lunar stroll were watched by an estimated 600 million people worldwide — and firmly established him as one of the great heroes of the 20th century. Armstrong, who had heart surgery in early August, died Saturday in Cincinnati at 82, said NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs. The cause was complications from cardiovascular procedures, his family announced.
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.
First man on moon Neil Armstrong dead at 82
Mary Slosson - Reuters
U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong, who took a giant leap for mankind when he became the first person to walk on the moon, has died at the age of 82, his family said on Saturday. Armstrong died following complications from heart-bypass surgery he underwent earlier this month, the family said in a statement, just two days after his birthday on August 5. As commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. As he stepped on the dusty surface, Armstrong said: "?That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." Those words endure as one of the best known quotes in the English language.
Astronaut Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on moon, dies at age 82
Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log
First moonwalker Neil Armstrong's death at the age of 82 marks the passing of a "reluctant American hero," as well as the dimming of the Space Age's brightest moment. His death followed complications from heart-bypass surgery he underwent this month, Armstrong's family said today in a statement released by NASA. The first public report of Armstrong's death came via NBC News' Cape Canaveral correspondent, Jay Barbree, a longtime friend. Armstrong has been immortalized in human history as the first human to set foot on a celestial body beyond Earth. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," he radioed back to Earth from the moon on July 20, 1969.
Apollo remembered, in Neil Armstrong's words
William Harwood - CBS News
On the 40th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 mission, moonwalker Neil Armstrong, who passed away Saturday at the age of 82, spoke at the National Air & Space Museum to recall the engineering triumph that won the Cold War space race and opened the door to the manned exploration of the solar system. "Thank you so much," he said after a standing ovation. "Whenever I come to this city, if I have 20 minutes to spare, I come to this building. Not necessarily to look at craft hanging from the ceiling and sitting on the floors. But to absorb, by osmosis or radiation or some unknown mechanism, some of the history that resides here. And it must have worked, because as one young man recently said to me, 'Pop, you're history!'
Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, dies at 82
He uttered famous 'One small step' phrase after making history
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle
Neil Alden Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon and a giant of space exploration, died Saturday. He was 82. According to his family, Armstrong died of complications following bypass surgery. Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969, and was the first astronaut to step outside. He was followed to the lunar surface by Buzz Aldrin.
Neil Armstrong: 'His spirit will carry us to the stars'
James Dean, Scott Gunnerson & Mara Bellaby - Florida Today
You won’t be alone — people across the Space Coast, the nation and the world are remembering one of the greatest American heroes of all time. Neil Armstrong. A man whose “one small step” changed history. A modest man who shied away from the limelight but whose skill under pressure delivered America its crowning technological achievement. A test pilot whose leap down a ladder onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, inspired the world to believe that anything — if you worked hard enough — was possible.
Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, dies
Gary Strauss - USA Today
Astronaut Neil Armstrong, who uttered one of history's most famous proclamations when he became the first man to walk on the moon in 1969, died Saturday. Armstrong was commander of the Apollo 11 mission that made the first manned lunar landing on July 20, 1969. He had undergone heart surgery Aug. 8, three days after his 82nd birthday. His family said that Armstrong had died from post-surgery complications. "We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures,'' the family said in a statement. "Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend."
Neil Armstrong - a test pilot's test pilot
Guy Norris - Aviation Week
America and the world salute Neil Armstrong, the Apollo 11 astronaut who became the first human being to set foot on the moon and who died Aug. 25, 2012, aged 82. Inspiring millions with his actions, yet shunning the celebratory status which followed the lunar landing in July 1969, Armstrong remained an unassuming and deeply private man to the end.
John Glenn: Neil Armstrong pioneered way to moon
Marcia Dunn - Associated Press
John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, said Neil Armstrong dedicated himself to his country and will always be remembered for pioneering the way to the moon. In a phone interview Saturday with The Associated Press, Glenn said he will miss Armstrong and noted that he was a close friend. The two astronauts — arguably NASA's most famous — both hailed from Ohio. "When I think of Neil, I think of someone who for our country was dedicated enough to dare greatly," Glenn said.
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.
Obama, Romney, others react to Armstrong’s passing
SpacePolitics.com
On Saturday afternoon, the family of Neil Armstrong announced that the famous astronaut had passed away at the age of 82 after complications from heart surgery he had earlier this month. Within a few hours there was an outpouring of reaction to the death of the first man to walk on the Moon, including official statements from President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
US astronaut Neil Armstrong dies, first man on Moon
BBC News
US astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, has died aged 82. A statement from his family says he died from complications from heart surgery he had earlier this month. He set foot on the Moon on 20 July 1969, famously describing the event as "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind". US President Barack Obama said Armstrong was "among the greatest of American heroes - not just of his time, but of all time".
NASA's pioneering astronauts: Where are they now?
Associated Press
As space exploration has become more common and the number of astronauts has risen past 300, many names have faded into the background. But some will forever be associated with the golden age of space exploration…
__________
COMPLETE STORIES
Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, passes away
William Harwood - CBS News
Neil Alden Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and an enduring icon of the space age for taking "one giant leap for mankind," died Saturday after complications from cardiovascular surgery. He was 82.
"We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away," his family said in a statement. "Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend.
"Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. He also found success back home in his native Ohio in business and academia, and became a community leader in Cincinnati.
"He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits."
On July 20, 1969, Armstrong stepped off the footpad of the Apollo 11 lunar lander Eagle and onto the surface of the moon, uttering 11 words -- 12 if you include a dropped or garbled "a" -- that instantly became synonymous with the triumph of the Apollo moon program and America's victory in the space race with the Soviet Union.
"That's one small step for (a) man," he said, "one giant leap for mankind."
Back on Earth 238,000 miles away, millions of people around the world shared that historic first step in grainy black-and-white television and heard his words through mission control in Houston. It was the ultimate live shot, watched by more than a billion people.
"He told me he wanted to be sure that what he said included everybody in the whole world," his mother, Viola, once said of Armstrong's first words from the surface, adding that he came up with the phrase at the last minute.
"He told me it was only shortly before he stepped down on the moon that the words came to him," she said.
Armstrong and crewmate Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin spent two-and-a-half hours on the surface, collecting 47 pounds of moon rocks and soil before blasting off and rejoining command module pilot Michael Collins in lunar orbit.
Returning to Earth, Armstrong was celebrated as a hero and received decorations from 17 countries, along with dozens of medals, awards and other honors. He was 38 years old.
"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," Aldrin said in a statement. "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. My friend Neil took the small step but giant leap that changed the world and will forever be remembered as a landmark moment in human history."
Apollo 11 Flight Director Gene Kranz said Armstrong's quiet competence and willingness to take the ultimate risk for the greater good marked him as a genuine hero.
"I didn't know that Neil was going go be targeted for the first lunar landing, but when they named him what immediately came to mind the name (Charles) Lindbergh," Kranz said in an interview Saturday. "Because he was the kind of person that you want for that first-of-a-kind, very harrowing mission.
"As we got closer to the launch, the flight directors and the flight control team became acutely aware of the risks of this thing that we were calling the first lunar landing. ... As we moved into that frame of mind, I really thought of Neil in somewhat of a different fashion, I thought of him as a Jimmy Dolittle, the kind of guy who was willing to take the risk for all."
Recalling Armstrong, Kranz summed the feelings of many in the close-knit space community, saying "he was just an absolute gentleman. He was the kind of guy you want as a hero."
Added Collins in a NASA release: "He was the best and I will miss him terribly."
Armstrong left NASA shortly after Apollo 11 and devoted his life to mostly private pursuits in engineering and aviation. He made no attempt to take advantage of his fame, routinely declining interview requests and seldom appearing in public.
"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," his family said Saturday.
"While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.
"For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have 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 is survived by his wife, two sons, a step son and step daughter, 10 grandchildren, a brother and a sister.
Born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930, Armstrong's love of flying began at an early age. His father took him on his first airplane ride when he was 6. The young Armstrong was a voracious reader and clearly fascinated by flying, earning membership in the American Rocketry Society.
He was a frequent figure at the Wapakoneta airport, chatting with airplane mechanics and learning everything he could about flying. He paid for flying lessons and earned his pilot's license before he was old enough to legally drive a car.
Like many future astronauts, he attended Purdue University and earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering before moving on to the University of Southern California and earning a master's in aerospace engineering.
During the Korean War, he flew 78 combat missions for the Navy, once bailing out after nursing a severely damaged jet back from enemy territory.
He then spent seven years as a test pilot, including pioneering flights in the X-15 rocket plane, before being selected by NASA to join the astronaut corps in 1962. He ultimately logged flying time in 200 different types of aircraft, including jets, rockets, helicopters and gliders.
Apollo 11 crewmate Collins, writing in his book "Carrying the Fire," described Armstrong as a man who "savors" decisions, "rolling them around on his tongue like a fine wine and swallowing at the very last moment. Neil is a classy guy, and I can't offhand think of a better choice to be first man on the moon."
Armstrong demonstrated that calm under pressure during his flight as commander of the two-man Gemini 8 mission in 1966.
He and astronaut David Scott carried out the first orbital docking, with Armstrong guiding the nose of the Gemini capsule into an attachment mechanism on an Agena target satellite.
But shortly after, a jammed rocket thruster on the Gemini spacecraft sent the capsule into a wild tumble and only cool thinking by Armstrong and Scott prevented a disaster. The astronauts made a successful emergency descent to a Pacific Ocean splashdown.
But nothing compared to the white-knuckle Apollo 11 moon landing, a do-or-die feat of precision flying with little margin for error.
"It was the most demanding, the systems were the most heavily loaded, there were the largest number of unknowns, things were being taxed to the limit and it was most challenging from a personal standpoint," he once said.
"Aviators always like to make nice approaches and smooth landings and that's what we were after and we were fortunate to have that. The other parts were exciting. There were no parts of the entire voyage that were ho hum. Every minute was exciting. Although time dims the memories somewhat, it certainly dims not the enthusiasm or excitement."
The dramatic nature of that first moon landing was captured in the tense dialogue between mission control in Houston and the astronauts aboard the Eagle.
Eagle: "Forty feet, down two and a half, kicking up some dust ... 30 feet, two and a half down ... faint shadow ... four forward, four forward, drifting to the right a little ... six ... down a half."
Houston: "30 seconds (of fuel remaining)."
Eagle: "Forward. Drifting right ... contact light! OK, engine stop. ACA out of detent. Modes control both auto, descent engine command override off. Engine arm off."
Houston: "We copy you down, Eagle."
Armstrong: "Houston, Tranquillity base here. The Eagle has landed."
Houston: "Roger, Tranquillity, we copy you on the ground. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot."
A few minutes later, Armstrong provided a bit more information:
"Houston, that may have seemed like a very long final phase," Armstrong radioed. "The auto targeting was taking us right into a football-field sized crater, with a large number of big boulders and rocks ... and it required flying manually over the rock field to find a reasonably good landing area."
Armstrong was first to venture out onto the moon's surface, followed by Aldrin. Initial plans called for the lunar module pilot -- Aldrin -- to be first on the moon but that policy later was changed. Collins wrote that Armstrong, as commander of the mission, made the decision to exit first.
In his book "Men From Earth," Aldrin wrote: "We'd both seen the earlier mission plans that had the LM (lunar module) pilot exiting first, but we'd also seen the more recent draft procedures that left the issue unresolved."
Ultimately, Aldrin wrote, Donald "Deke" Slayton, chief of the astronaut office, made the decision that Armstrong would be first on the moon.
At a news conference marking the 25th anniversary of the landing, Armstrong said the decision was never his to make.
"Well, both of these gentlemen have written on that subject and I haven't, so I'll just tell you that, although they may or may not have known what my feelings, in fact, were at the time, that I had zero input, no input whatever, into that decision."
In any case, Aldrin and Armstrong spent two hours and 32 minutes walking on the lunar surface setting out experiments and collecting 47 pounds of rock and lunar soil.
During an interview 10 years later, Armstrong tried to describe his feelings when he and Aldrin planted an American flag in the dusty lunar soil.
"Feelings are an extremely difficult thing to portray," he said. "I do remember the scene very vividly. We didn't have a strong nationalistic feeling at that time. I think we felt more that is was a venture of mankind and we were delighted to be part of the country that made it happen."
Armstrong said his experiences on the moon did not change his basic character. But he said it did change the way he looked at Earth's satellite.
"I used to see a flat disc in the sky and now I see places that I've been and can relate to," he said.
As for the significance of the Apollo 11 flight, Armstrong said such judgments were best left to historians .
"Well, it's human nature to adapt very quickly to new situations," he said at the news conference before the 20th anniversary of the moon landing. "We sort of are amazed by, enthralled by, then bored by, and eventually forget some new things, usually within one revolution of the Earth around the sun.
"That's the way humans are. And so it's of great surprise to me that so many people remember something that happened 20 years ago."
Armstrong left the astronaut corps shortly after the Apollo 11 mission and briefly served as Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics at NASA Headquarters in Washington, coordinating aeronautics research and technology.
After leaving NASA, he served as professor of aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati from 1971 to 1979 and then served as chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation Inc., in Charlottesville, Va., between 1982 and 1992.
In 1986, Armstrong served as vice chairman of the presidential commission that investigated the 1986 Challenger disaster, a role he would reprise in 2003 as a member of the panel that investigated the loss of the shuttle Columbia.
He was a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and the Royal Aeronautical Society and an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
His decorations include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the Explorers Club Medal, the Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Harmon International Aviation Trophy. He also held the Federation Aeronautique Internationale's Gold Space Medal, the American Astronautical Society Flight Achievement Award and the Robert J. Collier Trophy.
"I had truly hoped that in 2019, we would be standing together along with our colleague Mike Collins to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of our moon landing," Aldrin said. "Regrettably, this is not to be. Neil will most certainly be there with us in spirit."
Made ‘Giant Leap’ as First Man to Step on Moon
John Noble Wilford - New York Times
Neil Armstrong, who made the “giant leap for mankind” as the first human to set foot on the moon, died on Saturday. He was 82.
His family said in a statement that the cause was “complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.” He had undergone heart bypass surgery this month in Cincinnati, near where he lived. His recovery had been going well, according to those who spoke with him after the surgery, and his death came as a surprise to many close to him, including his fellow Apollo astronauts. The family did not say where he died.
A quiet, private man, at heart an engineer and crack test pilot, Mr. Armstrong made history on July 20, 1969, as the commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the mission that culminated the Soviet-American space race in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy had committed the nation “to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” It was done with more than five months to spare.
On that day, Mr. Armstrong and his co-pilot, Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., known as Buzz, steered their lunar landing craft, Eagle, to a level, rock-strewn plain near the southwestern shore of the Sea of Tranquillity. It was touch and go the last minute or two, with computer alarms sounding and fuel running low. But they made it.
“Houston, Tranquillity Base here,” Mr. Armstrong radioed to mission control. “The Eagle has landed.”
“Roger, Tranquillity,” mission control replied. “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 same could have been said for hundreds of millions of people around the world watching on television.
A few hours later, there was Mr. Armstrong bundled in a white spacesuit and helmet on the ladder of the landing craft. Planting his feet on the lunar surface, he said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” (His words would become the subject of a minor historical debate, as to whether he said “man” or an indistinct “a man.”)
Soon Colonel Aldrin joined Mr. Armstrong, bounding like kangaroos in the low lunar gravity, one sixth that of Earth’s, while the command ship pilot, Michael Collins, remained in orbit about 60 miles overhead, waiting their return. In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon between then and the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
The Apollo 11 mission capped a tumultuous and consequential decade. The ’60s in America had started with such promise, with the election of a youthful president, mixed with the ever-present anxieties of the cold war. Then it touched greatness in the civil rights movement, only to implode in the years of assassinations and burning city streets and campus riots. But before it ended, human beings had reached that longtime symbol of the unreachable.
The moonwalk lasted 2 hours and 19 minutes, long enough to let the astronauts test their footing in the fine and powdery surface — Mr. Armstrong noted that his boot print was less than an inch deep — and set up a television camera and scientific instruments and collect rock samples.
After news of Mr. Armstrong’s death was reported, President Obama, in a statement from the White House, said, “Neil was among the greatest of American heroes.”
“And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time,” the president added, “he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten.”
Charles F. Bolden Jr., the current NASA administrator, 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.”
Mr. Bolden also noted that in the years after the moonwalk, Mr. Armstrong “carried himself with a grace and humility that was an example to us all.” The historian Douglas Brinkley, who interviewed Mr. Armstrong for a NASA oral history, described him as “our nation’s most bashful Galahad.” His family called him “a reluctant hero who always believed he was just doing his job.”
Indeed, some space officials have cited these characteristics, as well as his engineering skills and experience piloting X-15 rocket planes, as reasons that Mr. Armstrong stood out in the astronaut corps. After the post-flight parades and a world tour for the three Apollo 11 astronauts, Mr. Armstrong gradually withdrew from the public eye. He was not reclusive, but as much as possible he sought to lead a private life, first as an associate administrator in the space program, then as a university professor and director of a number of corporations.
Neil Alden Armstrong was born on Aug. 5, 1930, in the small town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, to Stephen Armstrong and the former Viola Louise Engel. His father was a state auditor, which meant the family moved every few years to a new Ohio town while Neil was growing up. At the age of 6, Neil and his father took a ride in a Ford Trimotor airplane, known as the Tin Goose. It must have made an impression, for by the time he was 15, he had learned to fly, even before he got his driver’s license.
Neil became an Eagle Scout when the family later moved back to Wapakoneta, where he finished high school. (The town now has a museum named for Mr. Armstrong.) From there, he went to Purdue University as an engineering student on a Navy scholarship. His college years were interrupted by the Korean War, in which Mr. Armstrong was a Navy fighter pilot who flew 78 combat missions, one in which he was forced to eject after the plane lost one of its ailerons, the hinged flight-control panels on the wings.
In “First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong,” James R. Hansen wrote that in Mr. Armstrong’s first year at Purdue, Charles E. Yeager broke the sound barrier in the rocket-powered Bell X-1. It was exciting but bittersweet for the young student. He thought aviation history had already passed him by.
“All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight,” Mr. Armstrong told his biographer, “I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight.”
During the Korean War, Mr. Armstrong was in the unit that the author James A. Michener wrote of in “The Bridges at Toko-Ri.” Back at Purdue after the Navy, Mr. Armstrong plunged more earnestly into aeronautical engineering studies, his grades rising and a career in sight.
By this time, he had also met Janet Elizabeth Shearon, a student in home economics from Evanston, Ill. Soon after his graduation, they were married, in January 1956.
They had two sons, Eric and Mark, who survive. A daughter, Karen, died of an inoperable brain tumor in 1962. The couple were divorced in 1994; Janet Armstrong lives in Utah. In 1999, Mr. Armstrong married Carol Knight, a widow 15 years his junior; she also survives. They lived in Indian Hill, a suburb of Cincinnati.
Other survivors include a stepson and stepdaughter; a brother, Dean; a sister, June Armstrong Hoffman, and 10 grandchildren.
After his first marriage, the newlyweds moved to California, where Mr. Armstrong had been hired as an experimental test pilot for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, at Edwards Air Force Base. His first flight in a rocket plane was in the Bell X-1B, a successor to the plane Mr. Yeager had first flown faster than the speed of sound.
Mr. Armstrong impressed his peers. Milt Thompson, one of the test pilots, said he was “the most technically capable of the early X-15 pilots.” Another colleague, Bill Dana, said he “had a mind that absorbed things like a sponge and a memory that remembered them like a photograph.” He made seven X-15 flights at 4,000 miles per hour, reaching the edge of space, and piloted many more of the most innovative and dangerous aircraft ever developed.
In 1958, Mr. Armstrong was chosen as a consultant for a military space plane project, the X-20 Dyna-Soar, and was later named one of the pilots. But the young test pilot was attracted by another opportunity. NASA was receiving applications for the second group of astronauts, after the Mercury Seven. His reputation after seven years at the NASA flight center at Edwards had preceded him, and so he was tapped for the astronaut corps.
“I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the Moon, but flying in a completely new medium,” Mr. Armstrong told his biographer.
At Houston, the new astronaut began training for flights in the two-person Gemini spacecraft, the successor to the smaller Mercury capsules and forerunner to the three-person Apollos. Mr. Armstrong became the first American civilian astronaut to fly in space, as commander of Gemini 8. He and his co-pilot, David R. Scott, were launched on March 16, 1966. They performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space, their Gemini linking with an unmanned Agena in an essential test for later operations on lunar flights.
Once docked, however, the joined spacecraft began to roll. Attempts to steady the vehicle were unavailing. On instructions from Mission Control, Mr. Armstrong separated Gemini from the Agena, but the rolling only increased, to the point that the astronauts were in danger of passing out. The problem was evidently in the Gemini itself. The astronauts turned the control thrusters off, switching to the re-entry control system. Stability was restored, but once the re-entry propulsion was activated, the crew was told to prepare to come home before the end of their only day in orbit.
Next, Mr. Armstrong was the backup commander for Apollo 8, the first flight to circumnavigate the Moon, doing so at Christmastime in 1968. It was the mission that put Apollo back on track after a cockpit fire during a launching pad rehearsal had killed three astronauts in January 1967. And it put Mr. Armstrong in position to command Apollo 11.
If everything went well with the lunar module test on Apollo 9 and with a shakedown flight to lunar orbit on Apollo 10, then Mr. Armstrong was in line to land on the Moon with Buzz Aldrin and with Michael Collins as the command module pilot. As the commander, NASA officials decided, Mr. Armstrong would be the first to walk on the Moon.
About six and a half hours after the landing, Mr. Armstrong opened the hatch of the four-legged lunar module and slowly made his way down the ladder to the lunar surface. A television camera followed his every step for all the world to see. A crater near the landing site is named in Mr. Armstrong’s honor.
Mr. Armstrong and Colonel Aldrin left a plaque on the Moon that read: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
After leaving the space program, Mr. Armstrong was careful to do nothing to tarnish that image or achievement. Though he traveled and gave speeches — as he did in October 2007, when he dedicated the new Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering at Purdue — he rarely gave interviews and avoided the spotlight.
In the biography “First Man,” Dr. Hansen noted, “Everyone gives Neil the greatest credit for not trying to take advantage of his fame, not like other astronauts have done.” To which Janet Armstrong responded: “Yes, but look what it’s done to him inside. He feels guilty that he got all the acclaim for an effort of tens of thousands of people.” Then she added: “He’s certainly led an interesting life. But he took it too seriously to heart.”
For a time, he was an associate NASA administrator for aeronautics, but he tired of a Washington desk job. Ignoring many high-level offers in business and academia, he returned to Ohio as a professor of aeronautical engineering at the University of Cincinnati and bought a farm near Lebanon, Ohio. He also served as a director for several corporations.
“He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits,” his family said in the statement.
Mr. Armstrong re-entered the public spotlight a couple of years ago to voice sharp disagreement with President Obama for canceling NASA’s program to send astronauts back to the Moon. Later, he testified to a Senate committee, expressing skepticism that the approach of relying on commercial companies would succeed.
Last September, Mr. Armstrong testified to a House committee that NASA “must find ways of restoring hope and confidence to a confused and disconsolate work force.”
Almost as soon as the news of his death was announced, there was an outpouring of well wishes and fond memorials on Web sites and social media, a reflection of the extraordinary public acclaim that came to a very private man.
“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,” his family said. “While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.”
Neil Armstrong, first man to step on the moon, dies at 82
Paul Duggan - Washington Post
Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who marked an epochal achievement in exploration with “one small step” from the Apollo 11 lunar module on July 20, 1969, becoming the first person to walk on the moon, died Aug. 25 in the Cincinnati area. He was 82.
His family announced the death in a statement and attributed it to “complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.”
A taciturn engineer and test pilot who was never at ease with his fame, Mr. Armstrong was among the most heroized Americans of the 1960s Cold War space race. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” he is famous for saying as he stepped on the moon, an indelible quotation beamed to a worldwide audience in the hundreds of millions.
Twelve years after the Soviet satellite Sputnik reached space first, deeply alarming U.S. officials, and after President John F. Kennedy in 1961 declared it a national priority to land an American on the moon “before this decade is out,” Mr. Armstrong, a former Navy fighter pilot, commanded the NASA crew that finished the job.
His trip to the moon — particularly the hair-raising final descent from lunar orbit to the treacherous surface — was history’s boldest feat of aviation. Yet what the experience meant to him, what he thought of it all on an emotional level, he mostly kept to himself.
Like his boyhood idol, transatlantic aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, Mr. Armstrong learned how uncomfortable the intrusion of global acclaim can be. And just as Lindbergh had done, he eventually shied away from the public and avoided the popular media.
In time, he became almost mythical.
Mr. Armstrong was “exceedingly circumspect” from a young age, and the glare of international attention “just deepened a personality trait that he already had in spades,” said his authorized biographer, James R. Hansen, a former NASA historian.
In an interview, Hansen, author of “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong,” cited another “special sensitivity” that made the first man on the moon a stranger on Earth.
“I think Neil knew that this glorious thing he helped achieve for the country back in the summer of 1969 — glorious for the entire planet, really — would inexorably be diminished by the blatant commercialism of the modern world,” Hansen said.
“And I think it’s a nobility of his character that he just would not take part in that.”
A love of flying
The perilous, 195-hour journey that defined Mr. Armstrong’s place in history — from the liftoff of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969, to the capsule’s splashdown in the Pacific eight days later — riveted the world’s attention, transcending cultural, political and generational divides in an era of profound social tumult and change in the United States.
As Mr. Armstrong, a civilian, and his crewmates, Air Force pilots Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins, hurtled through space, television viewers around the globe witnessed a drama of spellbinding technology and daring. About a half-billion people listened to the climactic landing and watched a flickering video feed of the moonwalk.
At center stage, cool and focused, was a pragmatic, 38-year-old astronaut who would let social critics and spiritual wise men dither over the larger meaning of his voyage. When Mr. Armstrong occasionally spoke publicly about the mission in later decades, he usually did so dryly, his recollections mainly operational.
“I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer,” he said at a millennial gathering honoring the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century. Unlike Aldrin and Collins, Mr. Armstrong never published a memoir.
After flying experimental rocket planes in the 1950s at Edwards Air Force Base in California — the high-desert realm of daredevil test pilots later celebrated in author Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” — Mr. Armstrong was selected for NASA’s astronaut corps in 1962 and became the first U.S. civilian to be blasted into space.
In 1966, during his only spaceflight other than Apollo 11, a life-threatening malfunction of his Gemini 8 vehicle caused the craft to tumble out of control in Earth orbit. It was the nation’s first potentially fatal crisis in space, prompting Mr. Armstrong and his crewmate to abort their mission and carry out NASA’s first emergency reentry.
His skill and composure were put to no greater test, though, than in the anxious minutes starting at 4:05 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, July 20, 1969. That was when the lunar module carrying Mr. Armstrong and Aldrin, having separated from the Apollo 11 capsule, began its hazardous, nine-mile final descent to the moon’s Sea of Tranquility.
Collins, waiting in lunar orbit, could only hope that the two would make it back.
The lunar module, or LM (pronounced lem), was dubbed “Eagle.” Its 1969 computer, overtaxed during the descent and flashing alarm lights as it fell behind on its work, guided the spiderlike craft most of the way to the surface.
In the last few thousand feet, however, Mr. Armstrong, looking out a window, saw that the computer had piloted Eagle beyond its targeted landing spot. The craft was headed for a massive crater surrounded by boulders as big as cars.
Mr. Armstrong, as planned, took manual control of the LM at 500 feet. Standing in the cramped cockpit, piloting with a control stick and toggle switch, he maneuvered past the crater while scanning the rugged moonscape for a place to safely put down.
Although the world remembers him best for walking on the moon, Mr. Armstrong recalled his time on the surface as anticlimactic, “something we looked on as reasonably safe and predictable.” Flying the LM was “by far the most difficult and challenging part” of the mission, he told a group of youngsters in a 2007 e-mail exchange.
The “very high risk” descent was “extremely complex,” he wrote, and guiding the craft gave him a “feeling of elation.”
“Pilots take no particular joy in walking,” he once remarked. “Pilots like flying.”
‘One giant leap’
As he and Aldrin kept descending, balanced on a cone of fire 240,000 miles from Earth, the LM’s roaring engine kicked up a fog of moon dust, distorting Mr. Armstrong’s depth perception and clouding his view of the surface.
Meanwhile, the descent engine’s fuel — separate from the fuel that would later power the ascent engine on their departure from the moon — dwindled to a critical level.
“Quantity light,” Aldrin warned at just under 100 feet. This meant that Mr. Armstrong, according to NASA’s instruments, had less than two minutes to ease the LM to the surface or he would have faced a frightful dilemma.
He would have had to abort the descent, ending the mission in failure at a cost of immense national prestige and treasure, or he would have had to risk a sort of crash landing after the fuel ran out — letting the LM fall in lunar gravity the rest of the way down, hoping the slow-motion plunge wouldn’t badly damage it.
Finally, with 50 seconds to spare, the world heard Aldrin say, “Contact light,” and Eagle’s landing gear settled on the lunar soil. Their precarious, 12-minute descent into the unknown left Mr. Armstrong’s pulse pounding at twice the normal rate.
Humanity listened, transfixed. “Houston, Tranquility base here,” Mr. Armstrong reported. “The Eagle has landed.” The response from mission control was filled with relief: “Roger, Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
About 61 / 2 hours later, Mr. Armstrong, soon to be followed by Aldrin, climbed down the ladder outside the LM’s hatch as a television camera mounted on the craft transmitted his shadowy, black-and-white image to hundreds of millions of viewers.
How Mr. Armstrong wound up commanding the historic flight had to do with his abilities and experience, plus a measure of good fortune.
Months earlier, when he had been named Apollo 11 commander, NASA envisioned his mission as the first lunar landing — yet no one could be sure. Three other Apollo flights had to finish preparing the way. If any of them had failed, Apollo 11 would have had to pick up the slack, leaving the momentous first landing to a later crew.
Why the space agency chose Mr. Armstrong, not Aldrin, for the famous first step out of the LM had to do with the two men’s personalities.
Publicly, NASA said the first-step decision was a technical one dictated by where the astronauts would be positioned in the LM’s small cockpit. But in his 2001 autobiography, Christopher C. Kraft Jr., a top NASA flight official, confirmed the true reason.
Aldrin, who would struggle with alcoholism and depression after his astronaut career, was overtly opinionated and ambitious, making it clear within NASA why he thought he should be first. “Did we think Buzz was the man who would be our best representative to the world, the man who would be legend?” Kraft recalled. “We didn’t.”
The stoic Mr. Armstrong, on the other hand, quietly held to his belief that the descent and landing, not the moonwalk, would be the mission’s signature achievement. And it didn’t matter to him whether the Earthbound masses thought differently.
“Neil Armstrong, reticent, soft-spoken and heroic, was our only choice,” Kraft said.
As for his famous statement upon stepping off the ladder, Mr. Armstrong said he didn’t dwell on it much beforehand, that the idea came to him only after the landing.
He would always maintain that he had planned to say “a man.” Whether the “a” was lost in transmission or Mr. Armstrong misspoke has never been fully resolved. As his boots touched the lunar surface at 10:56:15 p.m. Eastern, the world heard:
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Ever the precise engineer, Mr. Armstrong later said that if it were up to him, history would record his immortal words with an “a” inserted in parentheses.
The ultimate mission
Neil Alden Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, outside the little farming town of Wapakoneta in western Ohio. From the morning in 1936 when his father, an auditor of county records, let him skip Sunday school so the two could go aloft in a barnstorming Ford Trimotor plane near their home, the boy was hooked on aviation.
He got his pilot’s license on his 16th birthday, before he was legally old enough to go solo in an automobile.
After a few semesters at Purdue University, he left for Navy flight training in 1949, eventually becoming the youngest pilot in his fighter squadron on the aircraft carrier USS Essex. He flew 78 combat missions in the Korean War and was shot down once before his tour of duty ended and he went back to Purdue.
After earning an aeronautical engineering degree in 1955, he joined NASA’s forerunner, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and was soon rocketing in the stratosphere, pushing the boundaries of aviation in missilelike research planes.
In 1959, at the beginning of the Mercury project, which would soon blast the first American into space, NASA chose its storied “original seven” astronauts from the ranks of active-duty military fliers. Mr. Armstrong, who was less than enthusiastic about the program, remained at Edwards as a civilian test pilot.
Then, in 1962, his 2-year-old daughter, Karen, died of brain cancer. Mr. Armstrong’s grief “caused him to invest [his] energies in something very positive,” his sister recalled in an interview with Hansen. “That’s when he started into the space program.”
Not long after Karen’s death, when NASA recruited its second group of astronauts, about 250 test pilots applied, and Mr. Armstrong was among the nine who made the cut. Most took part in the Earth-
orbiting Gemini missions of the mid-1960s, refining flight procedures that would be needed later in the moon-bound Apollo program.
Mr. Armstrong’s harrowing Gemini 8 flight, in March 1966, was aborted hours into its three-day schedule after the spacecraft began toppling end-over-end, pinwheeling so violently that Mr. Armstrong, the commander, and crewmate David Scott were in danger of blacking out, which almost surely would have been fatal.
A malfunctioning thruster was the culprit. “I gotta cage my eyeballs,” Mr. Armstrong remarked, deadpan, as he and Scott, their vision blurred, struggled to cut short their flight. NASA officials were impressed by Mr. Armstrong’s handling of the crisis, and three years later they entrusted him with command of the ultimate mission.
A very private life
After weeks of hoopla surrounding Apollo 11’s return — a ticker-tape parade, a presidential dinner, a 28-city global goodwill tour — Mr. Armstrong worked in NASA management for two years, then joined the University of Cincinnati’s engineering faculty.
“We were not naive, but we could not have guessed what the volume and intensity of public interest would turn out to be,” he said of his worldwide celebrity.
Over the ensuing decades, Mr. Armstrong, a solitary figure, warded off reporters’ efforts to penetrate his privacy until most gave up or lost interest. Unhappy with faculty unionism, he resigned from the university in 1979 and spent the rest of his working life in business, amassing personal wealth as an investor and a member of corporate boards.
Although he was loath to exploit his fame, Mr. Armstrong signed on as a pitchman for Chrysler in his waning months as a professor, appearing in ads for the nearly bankrupt automaker, including one that aired during the Super Bowl in January 1979.
He said he agreed to the deal mainly because it involved an engineering consultancy and because he wanted to help a beleaguered U.S. company buffeted by imports and rising foreign oil prices. The arrangement was short-lived, however, and afterward Mr. Armstrong repeatedly turned down opportunities to endorse products.
Hansen, now an aerospace historian at Auburn University, said Mr. Armstrong felt awkward taking credit for the collective success of 400,000 employees of the space agency and its Apollo contractors. In 2003, Hansen recorded 55 hours of interviews with Mr. Armstrong after years of coaxing him to cooperate on a biography.
He was not a recluse, as some labeled him. In 1986, for instance, he was vice chairman of the commission that investigated the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
But that was a rare step into the spotlight. As a rule, Mr. Armstrong was extremely choosey about his public appearances, limiting them mostly to aerospace-related commemorative events and to other usually low-key gatherings that piqued his interest, such as meetings of scientific and technical societies.
“The lunar Lindbergh,” he was dubbed for his refusal to grant interviews to journalists. His remoteness also irked some NASA officials, who had vainly hoped that Mr. Armstrong would become a forceful public advocate for the funding of space exploration.
“How long must it take before I can cease to be known as a spaceman?” he once pleaded. Yet by the time he retired in 2002, to leisurely travel and enjoy his grandchildren, the “First Man” finally had outlived the nation’s fascination with him, and he could often walk down a street in blissful anonymity.
His 38-year marriage to the former Janet Shearon ended in divorce in 1994. Later that year, he married Carol Knight, a widowed mother of two teenagers. Besides his wife, survivors include two sons from his first marriage, Eric and Mark; two stepchildren; a brother; a sister; and 10 grandchildren.
“Looking back, we were really very privileged to live in that thin slice of history where we changed how man looks at himself, and what he might become, and where he might go,” Mr. Armstrong said in a 2001 NASA oral history project. “So I’m very thankful.”
Neil Armstrong, first person to walk on moon, dies at 82
Valerie Nelson & Eric Malnic - Los Angeles Times
When Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon, on July 20, 1969, he uttered a phrase that has been carved in stone and quoted across the planet: "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."
The grainy black-and-white television images of him taking his first lunar stroll were watched by an estimated 600 million people worldwide — and firmly established him as one of the great heroes of the 20th century.
Armstrong, who had heart surgery in early August, died Saturday in Cincinnati at 82, said NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs. The cause was complications from cardiovascular procedures, his family announced.
For the usually taciturn Armstrong, the poetic statement was a rare burst of eloquence, a sound bite for the ages that only increased his fame. He was never comfortable with celebrity he saw as an accident of fate, for stepping on the moon ahead of fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. The reticent, self-effacing Armstrong would shun the spotlight for much of the rest of his life.
In a rare public appearance, in 2000, Armstrong cast himself in another light: "I am, and ever will be, a white-sock, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer."
History would beg to disagree.
In a statement, President Obama said that when Armstrong stepped on the moon, "he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten."
And when Armstrong and his two fellow crew members lifted off from Earth in Apollo 11, "they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation," Obama said. "They set out to show the world that American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable — that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible."
NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke for many when he said, "As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them."
"Besides being one of America's greatest explorers, Neil carried himself with grace and humility that was an example to us all," Bolden said in a statement.
In the years that followed the flight of Apollo 11, Armstrong was asked again and again what it felt like to be the first man on the moon. In answering, he always shared the glory: "I was certainly aware that this was the culmination of the work of 300,000 to 400,000 people over a decade."
Yet how many other self-proclaimed nerdy engineers flew 78 combat missions as a Navy fighter pilot during the Korean War? Logged more than 1,000 hours as a test pilot in some of the world's fastest and most dangerous aircraft? Or became one of the first civilian astronauts and commanded Apollo 11, the first manned flight to land on the moon?
His biographer, James R. Hansen, called Armstrong "one of the best-known and least-understood people on the planet."
When asked to describe the astronaut in just a few words, Hansen told Ohio's Columbus Dispatch in 2005 that Armstrong was "stoic, self-controlled, dedicated, earnest, hardworking and honest."
Neil Alden Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on his grandfather's farm near Wapakoneta, Ohio, and had a happy and conventional upbringing.
His civil servant father, Stephen Armstrong, audited county records in Ohio and later served as assistant director of the Ohio Mental Hygiene and Corrections Department. The family of his mother, Viola, owned the farm.
For more than a decade, his family moved around Ohio to accommodate his father's job before settling down in Wapakoneta.
At age 6 he took a ride in a transport plane, then rushed home and began building model airplanes — and a wind tunnel to test them.
A good student, Armstrong was a much-decorated Boy Scout and played the baritone horn in a school band. But aviation always came first.
In 1945, he started taking flying lessons, paying for them by working as a stock clerk at a drugstore. On his 16th birthday, he got his pilot's license but didn't yet have a driver's license.
Upon graduating from high school in 1947, he attended Purdue University on a Navy scholarship. By the time the Korean War started in 1950, Armstrong had been called to active duty.
After flight training, Armstrong was assigned to the carrier Essex, flying combat missions over North Korea. Although one of the Panther jets he flew off the carrier was crippled by enemy fire, he nursed the plane back over South Korea before bailing out safely.
Recognized as an outstanding pilot with a flair for leadership, he received three Air Medals before finishing his active duty in 1952.
He returned to Purdue and earned a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering in 1955.
Within months, he was a civilian test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He was soon stationed at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, chronicled by author Tom Wolfe as the home to pilots with "The Right Stuff."
Aviators were closely scrutinized there, evaluated carefully as they pushed high-performance aircraft to "the edge of the envelope" and quizzed repeatedly about the scientific implications of their work.
"A lot of people couldn't figure Armstrong out," Wolfe wrote. "You'd ask him a question and he would just stare at you with those pale blue eyes of his.
"And you'd start to ask the question again, figuring that he hadn't understood, and — click — out of his mouth would come forth a sequence of long, quiet, perfectly formed, precisely thought-out sentences, full of anisotropic functions and multiple-encounter trajectories or whatever else was called for.
"It was as if his hesitations were just data punch-in intervals for his computer."
At Purdue, Armstrong dated a sorority beauty queen, Janet Shearon, and they were married in 1956. For a while they lived in a small shack without indoor plumbing in the San Gabriel Mountains overlooking Edwards.
Children soon followed. A son, Eric, in 1957 and a daughter, Karen, two years later. The couple had a second son, Mark, in 1963, a year after Karen died of a brain tumor. True to form, Armstrong did not publicly address the tragedy.
By 1963, NASA was striving to fulfill President Kennedy's goal of beating the Soviet Union in the space race and putting an American on the moon before the end of the decade. Kennedy wanted some civilian astronauts, and Armstrong was one of the first.
In 1966, he made his first space flight, with fellow astronaut David R. Scott. Their ship, Gemini 8, was docking with an unmanned Agena rocket when a malfunctioning thruster sent the interlocked space vehicles tumbling uncontrollably.
Unperturbed, Armstrong disconnected the two vehicles, brought Gemini 8 back under control and made a safe emergency landing in the Pacific. NASA officials cited his "extraordinary piloting skill" and took note of his calm.
Two years later, a lunar landing training vehicle Armstrong was piloting suffered control failure just 200 feet off the ground. Armstrong ejected, parachuting to safety.
On Jan. 1, 1969, he was named commander of Apollo 11, the first manned spaceship scheduled to land on the moon. His crewmates were fellow space veterans Aldrin and Michael Collins.
Five months later, the massive Apollo 11 spaceship was nudged carefully onto the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Fla., at Kennedy Space Center.
The vehicle was as long as a football field, tipped on end. It consisted of the command module Columbia, which would carry the three astronauts on their 238,000-mile journey and in which Collins would orbit the moon; the lunar lander Eagle, which would carry Armstrong and Aldrin down to the lunar surface; and a huge Saturn booster rocket to hurl the whole thing into space.
On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off. Two and a half hours later, after an orbit and a half around the Earth, onboard rockets fired to send the spaceship on its three-day trip to the moon. Once in lunar orbit, Armstrong and Aldrin clambered into the Eagle and descended toward the lunar surface, leaving Collins to circle above them.
The landing wasn't easy. The lunar surface was rockier than expected, and Armstrong had to pilot the fragile craft horizontally until he found a safe, flat spot.
On July 20, 1969, at 1:04:40 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, the small spacecraft came to rest gently near the moon's dry Sea of Tranquillity.
"The Eagle has landed," Armstrong radioed back to Earth.
At New York's Yankee Stadium, 16,000 fans stood up and cheered.
Six hours and 52 minutes later, as an onboard television camera sent grainy but stunning images back for the world to see, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on lunar soil.
His famous quote that would reverberate through time was actually missing a word, Armstrong said soon after returning to Earth.
As he gazed down at his footprint, the first made by a human on the moon, Armstrong said that he intended to say "one small step for a man" and thought that was what he had said. In a rare 1999 interview, he admitted he could not hear the "a" when he listened to the radio transmission as it traveled almost a quarter million miles back to Earth.
There had been some dispute over who would be the first man to step on the moon, Armstrong or Aldrin, but Donald "Deke" Slayton, head of the astronaut corps, said he made the call.
"Neil was the commander," Slayton once said. "He had the seniority, and that was all there was to it."
Aldrin stepped out of the Eagle a few minutes after Armstrong. The pair spent more than two hours on the lunar surface, collecting dozens of soil and rock samples, setting up seismic equipment, planting an American flag and taking photographs.
"Isn't this fun?" the usually reserved Armstrong remarked jocularly at one point, patting Aldrin on the shoulder as they bounded about in the low lunar gravity.
"The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said. He considered the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film "2001: A Space Odyssey" a realistic presentation of what it's like to be in space, according to Armstrong's biographer.
As Armstrong and Aldrin climbed back into the Eagle, they left behind a plaque that reads: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot on the moon. We come in peace for all mankind."
Within hours, the Eagle had lifted off from the moon and rejoined the Columbia, and the three astronauts were on their way back to Earth.
On July 24, 1969, Apollo 11 splashed down in the Pacific about 950 miles south of Hawaii. To ensure they weren't carrying any lunar organisms, the astronauts were quarantined for 18 days. President Nixon waved to them through a window of their isolation chamber.
The nation saluted them on Aug. 13, 1969, when they appeared in a parade in New York City in the morning and another in Chicago in the afternoon. That night, they were honored by 1,400 at a state dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Nixon gave each of them the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Then the trio left on a 22-nation tour, during which they met the queen of England, the shah of Iran and the pope.
Armstrong was "a no-frills kind of guy who didn't talk a whole lot, but usually said what he meant," Aldrin said in the 2009 book "Moondust."
The public adulation eventually dimmed for Aldrin and Collins, who survive him. But not for Armstrong; whenever he made a public appearance, people clamored for his autograph.
At first he retreated for a couple of years to a NASA desk job in Washington. After earning a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at USC, he returned to Ohio. For a decade, he taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
He bought a secluded 200-acre dairy farm near Lebanon, Ohio, and occasionally ventured into town for a quiet lunch at a local cafe. The town respected his privacy and he said he enjoyed the moderate physical work required on a farm.
When called by his country, he responded, serving in 1985 on the National Commission on Space and as vice chairman of the presidential commission that investigated the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. In 2010, he testified before Congress to object to proposed cuts in manned space-exploration projects.
He continued to fly, piloting a light plane. He served on the boards of several large corporations and chaired AIL Technologies, an aerospace electronics firm on Long Island, N.Y., from 1989 to 2002.
And he surprised many observers when he made television commercials for Chrysler in 1979.
In 1994, Armstrong divorced his wife of 38 years. Shortly afterward, he married the former Carol Knight, a woman 15 years his junior, and receded further from public life.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his two sons, a stepson, a stepdaughter, 10 grandchildren, a brother and a sister.
The closest Armstrong came to describing what the Apollo 11 mission meant to him was during a Life magazine interview several weeks before the flight.
"The single thing which makes any man happiest is the realization that he has worked up to the limits of his ability, his capacity," Armstrong said. "It's all the better, of course, if this work has made a contribution to knowledge, or toward moving the human race a little farther forward."
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."
First man on moon Neil Armstrong dead at 82
Mary Slosson - Reuters
U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong, who took a giant leap for mankind when he became the first person to walk on the moon, has died at the age of 82, his family said on Saturday.
Armstrong died following complications from heart-bypass surgery he underwent earlier this month, the family said in a statement, just two days after his birthday on August 5.
As commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. As he stepped on the dusty surface, Armstrong said: "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."
Those words endure as one of the best known quotes in the English language.
The Apollo 11 astronauts' euphoric moonwalk provided Americans with a sense of achievement in the space race with Cold War foe the Soviet Union and while Washington was engaged in a bloody war with the communists in Vietnam.
Neil Alden Armstrong was 38 years old at the time and even though he had fulfilled one of mankind's age-old quests that placed him at the pinnacle of human achievement, he did not revel in his accomplishment. He even seemed frustrated by the acclaim it brought.
"I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks but for the ledger of our daily work," Armstrong said in an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" program in 2005.
He once was asked how he felt knowing his footprints would likely stay on the moon's surface for thousands of years. "I kind of hope that somebody goes up there one of these days and cleans them up," he said.
A very private man
James Hansen, author of "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong," told CBS: "All of the attention that ... the public put on stepping down that ladder onto the surface itself, Neil never could really understand why there was so much focus on that."
The Apollo 11 moon mission turned out to be Armstrong's last space flight. The next year he was appointed to a desk job, being named NASA's deputy associate administrator for aeronautics in the office of advanced research and technology.
Armstrong's post-NASA life was a very private one. He took no major role in ceremonies marking the 25th anniversary of the moon landing. "He's a recluse's recluse," said Dave Garrett, a former NASA spokesman.
Hansen said stories of Armstrong dreaming of space exploration as a boy were apocryphal, although he was long dedicated to flight. "His life was about flying. His life was about piloting," Hansen said.
Born August 5, 1930, in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Armstrong was the first of three children of Stephen and Viola Armstrong. He married his college sweetheart, Janet Shearon, in 1956. They were divorced in 1994, when he married Carol Knight.
Armstrong had his first joyride in a plane at age 6. Growing up in Ohio, he began making model planes and by his early teens had amassed an extensive aviation library. With money earned from odd jobs, he took flying lessons and obtained his pilot's license even before he got a car license.
In high school he excelled in science and mathematics and won a U.S. Navy scholarship to Purdue University in Indiana, enrolling in 1947. He left after two years to become a Navy pilot, flying combat missions in the Korean War and winning three medals.
Flying test planes
After the war he returned to Purdue and graduated in 1955 with an aeronautical engineering degree. He joined the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), which became NASA in 1958.
Armstrong spent seven years at NACA's high-speed flight station at Edwards Air Force Base in California, becoming one of the world's best test pilots. He flew the X-15 rocket plane to the edge of space - 200,000 feet up at 4,000 mph.
In September 1962, Armstrong was selected by NASA to be an astronaut. He was command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission and backup command pilot for the Gemini 11 mission, both in 1966.
On the Gemini 8 mission, Armstrong and fellow astronaut David Scott performed the first successful docking of a manned spacecraft with another space vehicle.
Armstrong put his piloting skills to good use on the moon landing, overriding the automatic pilot so he and fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin would not have to land their module in a big rocky crater.
Yet the landing was not without danger. The lander had only about 30 seconds of fuel left when Armstrong put it down in an area known as the Sea of Tranquility and calmly radioed back to Mission Control on Earth, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."
Aldrin, who along with Armstrong and Michael Collins formed the Apollo 11 crew, told BBC radio that he would remember Armstrong as "a very capable commander and leader of an achievement that will be recognized until man sets foot on the planet Mars."
Armstrong left the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) a year after Apollo 11 to become a professor of engineering at the University of Cincinnati.
Declines offers to run for office
After his aeronautical career, Armstrong was approached by political groups, but unlike former astronauts John Glenn and Harrison Schmitt who became U.S. senators, he declined all offers.
In 1986, he served on a presidential commission that investigated the explosion that destroyed the space shuttle Challenger, killing its crew of seven shortly after launch from Cape Canaveral in January of that year.
Armstrong made a rare public appearance several years ago when he testified to a congressional hearing against President Barack Obama administration's plans to buy rides from other countries and corporations to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Armstrong also said that returning humans to the moon was not only desirable, but necessary for future exploration -- even though NASA says it is no longer a priority.
He lived in the Cincinnati area with his wife, Carol.
"We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away," the family said in their statement. "Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend."
His family expressed hope that young people around the world would be inspired by Armstrong's feat to push boundaries and serve a cause greater than themselves.
"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 family said.
Obama said that Armstrong "was among the greatest of American heroes - not just of his time, but of all time. ...
"Today, Neil's spirit of discovery lives on in all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploring the unknown - including those who are ensuring that we reach higher and go further in space. That legacy will endure - sparked by a man who taught us the enormous power of one small step."
Glenn, an original NASA astronaut with Armstrong, spoke of his colleague's humble nature. "He was willing to dare greatly for his country and he was proud to do that and yet remained the same humble person he'd always been," he told CNN on Saturday.
The space agency sent out a brief statement in the wake of the news, saying it "offers its condolences on today's passing of Neil Armstrong, former test pilot, astronaut and the first man on the moon."
Armstrong is survived by his two sons, a stepson and stepdaughter, 10 grandchildren, a brother and a sister, NASA said.
Some controversy still surrounds his famous quote. The live broadcast did not have the "a" in "one small step for a man ..." He and NASA insisted static had obscured the "a," but after repeated playbacks, he admitted he may have dropped the letter and expressed a preference that quotations include the "a" in parentheses.
Asked to describe what it was like to stand on the moon, he told CBS:
"It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it."
Astronaut Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on moon, dies at age 82
Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log
First moonwalker Neil Armstrong's death at the age of 82 marks the passing of a "reluctant American hero," as well as the dimming of the Space Age's brightest moment.
His death followed complications from heart-bypass surgery he underwent this month, Armstrong's family said today in a statement released by NASA. The first public report of Armstrong's death came via NBC News' Cape Canaveral correspondent, Jay Barbree, a longtime friend.
Armstrong has been immortalized in human history as the first human to set foot on a celestial body beyond Earth. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," he radioed back to Earth from the moon on July 20, 1969.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that "as long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them."
Armstrong's fellow moonwalker on the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin, was among the legions mourning his passage. "We are missing a great spokesman and leader in the space program," Aldrin said in a BBC interview. He said he'd remember Armstrong "as being a very capable commander and leader of an achievement that will be recognized until man sets foot on the planet Mars."
Michael Collins, the crewmate who circled the moon in the Apollo 11 command module while Armstrong and Aldrin took that first trip to the lunar surface, also paid tribute to his commander in a NASA statement: "He was the best, and I will miss him terribly."
President Barack Obama said that Armstrong and his crew "carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation," and that the first steps on the moon "delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten."
"Today, Neil's spirit of discovery lives on in all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploring the unknown — including those who are ensuring that we reach higher and go further in space," Obama said in a White House statement. "That legacy will endure — sparked by a man who taught us the enormous power of one small step."
The "one small step" served as the climax of a superpower space race with the Soviet Union, and arguably established the United States' primacy in outer space for decades to come. But Apollo 11 also set a precedent for peaceful cooperation in space. "We came in peace for all mankind," the plaque left behind on the moon read. At one point during Armstrong's first moonwalk, he stopped for what he called a "tender moment" and set down a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who died in the course of their duties.
Before and after the moon
The Ohio-born Armstrong began his career in aerospace as a Navy fighter pilot who served with distinction in the Korean War. During the 1950s, he was a test pilot with experience flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft. He was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962, and during his mission as Gemini 8 commander in 1966, he tamed his wildly spinning capsule and brought it in for an emergency landing.
That quiet cool served him well during Apollo 11, when he had to take manual control of the lunar module, nicknamed Eagle, during the landing. When the craft touched down in the moon's Sea of Tranquility, about 30 seconds' worth of fuel remained.
"Houston, Tranquility Base here," Armstrong reported to Mission Control. "The Eagle has landed."
Armstrong and Aldrin spent more than 21 hours on the lunar surface, including two and a half hours' worth of moonwalking. They were amazed to come back to Earth and see how millions of people across the planet had followed their exploits. "Neil, look up there," Aldrin told him as he pointed at a TV screen. "We missed the whole thing."
After his moon mission, Armstrong took a low profile, becoming what his family called a "reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job." He left NASA in 1971, and took on executive positions in the aerospace industry as well as a teaching position in the University of Cincinnati's engineering department. Armstrong served on several policy commissions, including the presidential panel that investigated the 1986 Challenger explosion.
Concerned about future spaceflight
In his latter years, Armstrong became increasingly concerned about America's continuing leadership in space. He was a strong proponent of efforts to send American astronauts back to the moon, and feared that NASA's cancellation of its return-to-the-moon program would cede America's position as a leader in space exploration to other nations.
"Some question why America should return to the moon," Armstrong told a House committee in 2010. "'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."
When NBC's Jay Barbree asked Armstrong last month to reflect on the future of spaceflight, for the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, the former astronaut pointed to remarks in which he said the lunar environment was "an exceptional location to learn about traveling to more distant places."
"I am persuaded that a return to the moon would be the most productive path to expanding the human presence in the solar system," he wrote.
Armstrong was famous for staying out of fame's spotlight as much as he could. Some outsiders may have faulted him for his reticence, but not his fellow astronauts.
"Most of our group in those days could have accomplished the challenge of the mission," Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham told NBC News' James Oberg in an email, "but I do not know a one that could have handled the resulting notoriety as well as Neil did."
Over the past year, Armstrong was a bit more in the public eye. Last November, he and other space pioneers — including Aldrin, Collins and John Glenn, the first American in orbit — were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.
In February, Armstrong spoke at Ohio State University during a February event honoring the 50th anniversary of Glenn's history-making spaceflight. In May, Armstrong joined Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida to support the opening of the National Flight Academy, which aims to teach math and science to kids through an aviation-oriented camp.
On Aug. 7, just two days after his 82nd birthday, Armstrong underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery after flunking a medical stress test. At the time, his wife, Carol, reported that her husband was "doing great" — but today the family said complications from that surgery led to his death.
"While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves," the family said in today's statement. "For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have 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 is survived by his wife, two sons, a stepson and stepdaughter, 10 grandchildren, a brother and a sister, NASA said. A website, NeilArmstrongInfo.com, has been created to provide more information about Armstrong's life and legacy.
Quick bites about Neil Armstrong:
· Armstrong's interest in flight began in childhood: He earned his student pilot's certificate on his 16th birthday, before he got an automobile driver's license. "He never had a girl. He didn't need a car. All he had to do was get out to that airport," Armstrong's father was quoted as saying in the astronaut's biography, "First Man."
· Armstrong's pulse was measured at 150 beats per minute as he guided the lunar lander to the moon's surface, NASA said. "I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats," Armstrong once said. "I don't intend to waste any of mine."
· Asked about his experience on the moon, he told CBS: "It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it."
· A crater on the moon is named for Armstrong. It is located about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the site of the landing.
· In 2005 Armstrong was upset to learn that his barber had sold clippings of his hair to a collector for $3,000. The man who bought the hair refused to return it, saying he was adding it to his collection of locks from Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein and others.
· Although he was famously reticent, Armstrong once appeared in a TV commercial for Chrysler. He said he made the ad because of Chrysler's engineering history and his desire to help the company out of financial troubles.
Apollo remembered, in Neil Armstrong's words
William Harwood - CBS News
On the 40th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 mission, moonwalker Neil Armstrong, who passed away Saturday at the age of 82, spoke at the National Air & Space Museum to recall the engineering triumph that won the Cold War space race and opened the door to the manned exploration of the solar system.
"Thank you so much," he said after a standing ovation. "Whenever I come to this city, if I have 20 minutes to spare, I come to this building. Not necessarily to look at craft hanging from the ceiling and sitting on the floors. But to absorb, by osmosis or radiation or some unknown mechanism, some of the history that resides here. And it must have worked, because as one young man recently said to me, 'Pop, you're history!'
"So let me take one minute to recount some of those flights that we saw in the video earlier. Forty winters have passed since the first manned flights of the Apollo spacecraft. And so, let's kind of return to that remarkable time between October of 1968 and November of 1969.
"Those 13 months began with the first manned Apollo flight, which demonstrated the ability of its command module to fly longer than the duration of a round trip to the moon. Just two months later, the second flight, in a remarkably bold move, flew to, and orbited, the moon.
"The third flight, in Earth orbit, tested the lunar module in its inaugural flight. Two months later, the fourth flight took a lunar module to lunar orbit in a dress rehearsal that demonstrated the ability of mission control to communicate and track two vehicles in different orbits about the moon.
"The fifth flight completed the final step, demonstrating the ability to descend to, land on, and return from the moon to lunar orbit. The sixth flight, the last flight of 1969, was nearly operational, landing on the lunar surface precisely alongside the Surveyor 3 spacecraft, which had arrived there two-and-a-half years earlier.
"No flight test program of any complex flying machine was ever conducted so efficiently and with such a small number of flights. Six more ever more complex and difficult flights would continue the Apollo exploration program over the following three years.
"Those successes were very impressive 40 years ago, but they were not miraculous. They were the result of the imagination and inventive minds of the people in the Apollo project since its inception eight years earlier. Those years engendered some of the most challenging, most difficult and most productive work in the history of modern engineering.
"Eight years, including a year and a half of redesign as a consequence of those deficiencies that were responsible for the tragic and fatal fire of the Apollo 1 spacecraft. Creating a strategy, a configuration and a craft to carry men to the moon was staggeringly complex. It required the very best in creativity, determination and perseverance that could be assembled in the American workplace.
"Seldom in recorded history have so many government employees so intensely and for such long hours worked at their chores. And seldom have so many aerospace engineers and craftsmen been so careful, so diligent and so determined.
"It was a superb national enterprise. Our knowledge of the moon increased a thousand-fold and more. Techniques were developed for interplanetary navigation and travel. Our home planet has been seen from afar and that perspective has caused us to think about its -- and our -- significance.
"Children, inspired by the excitement of space flight, have come to appreciate the wonder of science, the beauty of mathematics, and the precision of engineering. Young minds in our own country and around the world now believe they can do great things. And they can, if they apply themselves as intensely as the Apollo workforce did four decades ago.
"Tonight, we remember a special time. We remember a time, a passion for perfection, we remember a level of achievement, which really surprised us all. Human interest and media coverage this month confirmed that many others remember that time and remember Apollo with some warmth and even a little admiration.
"It left a lasting imprint on society and history. Tonight, we remember and congratulate all those who made it possible. Apollo was a good thing to do."
Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, dies at 82
He uttered famous 'One small step' phrase after making history
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle
Neil Alden Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon and a giant of space exploration, died Saturday. He was 82.
According to his family, Armstrong died of complications following bypass surgery.
Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969, and was the first astronaut to step outside. He was followed to the lunar surface by Buzz Aldrin.
"That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong radioed back to mission control in Houston.
The brazen and successful landing - and subsequent return to Earth - capped a hotly contested space race between the United States and the U.S.S.R. at the height of the Cold War, and vindicated President John F. Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon within a decade.
"Neil was among the greatest of American heroes - not just of his time, but of all time," President Barack Obama said Saturday. "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. And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time, he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten."
Perhaps when he walked on the lunar regolith, Armstrong believed he was taking humanity's first steps into the universe. But his feat is a spaceflight achievement NASA has yet to surpass in the 43 years and two months since.
When he returned to Earth, Armstrong wasn't entirely prepared for the crush of media attention and public adoration. He spent much of his life in a private manner, removed from the spotlight.
But toward the end of his life he began to change.
"Uncharacteristically, in the past two years, he was concerned that NASA was planning an approach to human spaceflight that did not meet his standards of adequate planning for ensuring crew safety, and was willing to say so publicly," said John Logsdon, a space historian and former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
Since 2010, Armstrong had criticized NASA's slow progress toward building a new generation of rockets and spacecraft to carry humans beyond low-Earth orbit. He testified before Congress and lent his name to a number of letters.
'Our role model'
Among those Armstrong worked closely with in recent years was another lion of NASA's halycon Apollo days, Chris Kraft, the space agency's first flight director and the man for whom mission control at Johnson Space Center is named.
"He recognized … that he had an obligation to help restore the American dream of keeping us a great nation and that the space program was one of the integral parts of that," Kraft said.
"In fact we talked about it quite often and tried to make sure we all were saying the right things together to bring us back to making it happen. In that respect, he was truly an American patriot."
For more than four decades Armstrong had been the face of what is arguably America's top technological triumph. In the spaceflight community, though, he was recalled quite differently.
"The whole world knew Neil as the first man to step foot on the moon, but to us he was a co-worker, a friend, and an outstanding spokesman for the Human Space Program," said former astronaut Mike Coats, who directs JSC. "His quiet confidence and ability to perform under pressure set an example for all subsequent astronauts. Our role model will be missed."
He had the ability to awe current astronauts.
Logsdon recalled Armstrong making an impromptu visit in 2006 to Ellington Field to greet the crew of STS-121. They had just returned from their mission to the International Space Station.
"It is impossible to capture their surprise and excitement as they walked off their plane to find an American hero there to greet them," Logsdon said.
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 over Korea.
After the war, Armstrong got 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 became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, piloting more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.
He was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962. After the first space docking, he brought the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit.
Armstrong was backup commander for the Apollo 8 mission at Christmas time in 1968. In that flight, Commander Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell and Bill Anders circled the moon 10 times, paving the way for the lunar landing seven months later.
Largest audience ever
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 recalled.
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.
Campers in California without television ran to their cars to listen 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 on the TV screen. Others peeked through telescopes in hopes of spotting the astronauts.
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker-tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and later made a 22-nation world tour.
In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA, but left the next 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 said there was one disappointment relating to his moon walk.
"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.
Neil Armstrong: 'His spirit will carry us to the stars'
James Dean, Scott Gunnerson & Mara Bellaby - Florida Today
You won’t be alone — people across the Space Coast, the nation and the world are remembering one of the greatest American heroes of all time.
Neil Armstrong. A man whose “one small step” changed history. A modest man who shied away from the limelight but whose skill under pressure delivered America its crowning technological achievement. A test pilot whose leap down a ladder onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969, inspired the world to believe that anything — if you worked hard enough — was possible.
“Neil Armstrong was a hero not just of his time, but of all time,” President Barack Obama said. “Thank you, Neil, for showing us the power of one small step.”
Armstrong died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, his family said in a statement Saturday. He was 82.
“While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves,” his family said.
Voyage into history
Bathed in xenon spotlights that shot toward the pale, beckoning moon, a fully fueled Saturn V stood on a seaside Kennedy Space Center launch pad.
“It made all kinds of noises. It groaned and moaned a lot, and every once in a while, you would hear a relief valve pop when something overpressurized,” the late NASA launch pad leader Guenter Wendt told Florida Today on the Apollo 11 mission’s 30th anniversary.
A record 3,500 journalists were at KSC to chronicle the event, and another 20,000 politicians, movie stars and VIPs also showed up. Outside KSC’s gates, an estimated 1 million people crowded Space Coast highways and beaches.
“Ten, nine, ignition sequence start,” NASA launch commentator Jack King counted out.
Five powerful engines on the Saturn V rocket roared to life.
Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins rocked on top of the 36-story rocket for 8.9 seconds as the engines built up 7.5 million pounds of thrust.
Five launch tower swing arms pulled back from the Saturn V, and then, “Liftoff! We have a liftoff. Thirty-two minutes past the hour,” King said. “Liftoff of Apollo 11.”
“I looked out on the pad, and there is this magnificent rocket that's sitting there in a bed of flames,” King recalled earlier this year.
During the next three days, the Apollo 11 astronauts rocketed along at nearly 50 times the speed of a bullet, making their way across the 240,000-mile gulf between Earth and its moon.
Then, leaving Collins to lap the moon in the Command Service Module, Armstrong and Aldrin began their dive into the history books. It was July 20, 1969.
At 10:56 p.m., Armstrong became the first human to step on the surface of another planetary body.
“That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” he declared.
Armstrong and Aldrin spent the next two hours and 14 minutes collecting rocks, drilling core samples, setting out experiments and taking photographs of what Aldrin called “magnificent desolation.”
The pair planted an American flag and left a plaque inscribed, “Here Men From Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon The Moon. July 1969 A.D. We Came In Peace For All Mankind.”
“I was certainly aware that this was a culmination of the work of 300,000 or 400,000 people over a decade and that the nation’s hopes and outward appearance largely rested on how the results came out,” Armstrong said in a 2001 NASA interview. “With those pressures, it seemed the most important thing to do was focus on our job as best we were able to and try to allow nothing to distract us from doing the very best job we could.”
A modest hero
Armstrong instantly became the most famous man in the world. An American icon, celebrated for an achievement that 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.
“Besides being one of America’s greatest explorers, Neil carried himself with a grace and humility that was an example to us all. When President Kennedy challenged the nation to send a human to the moon, Neil Armstrong accepted without reservation,” NASA chief Charles Bolden said. “As we enter this next era of space exploration, we do so standing on the shoulders of Neil Armstrong.”
Accolades poured in Saturday from those who knew Armstrong and those who were inspired from afar.
“His spirit will carry us to the stars,” tweeted Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, which hopes to field one of the first private space vehicles to carry U.S. astronauts into space.
Aldrin, who trained with Armstrong, flew with him and called him a friend, recalled a man who changed the world. A man he declared “the best pilot I ever knew.” A man Aldrin hoped would be standing beside him in 2019, along with Collins, to commemorate the mission’s 50th anniversary.
“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,” Aldrin said in a statement. “Virtually the entire world took that memorable journey with us.”
Norm Carlson, lead test conductor for the Apollo 11 launch, first met Armstrong at KSC’s astronaut quarters for a pre-launch briefing.
“He was a great man and very personable with the people he worked with,” Carlson said. “He was very appreciative to the launch team and all the NASA folks.”
That modesty never left Armstrong. “He felt very strongly that the nation had given him a tremendous opportunity, and that he needed to repay the taxpayers and all of the citizens of the country, and to do that not by trading on celebrity but in giving back to the program and to the education community,” said Hugh Harris of Cocoa Beach, a former director of public affairs at KSC.
Lee Solid of Merritt Island, former KSC site director for Rocketdyne, the maker of Saturn V rocket engines, recalled running into Armstrong at the launch of shuttle Endeavour in May 2011, the second to last mission of the shuttle program.
“He happened to come in sort of incognito,” Solid said. “I was told he was going to be out at the Saturn V Center, so I managed to find my way over there. Sure enough, he was standing there all alone. And we just chatted about those days, and he wanted to talk about rocket engines, and so we chatted a little bit about rocket engines ... He was just a great man.”
Calm in a crisis
Armstrong's life began and ended quietly in Ohio. He was born on Aug 5, 1930.
He went on to be a fighter pilot in the Korean War, he tested experimental jet planes, and in 1962, became an astronaut.
He served as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission, in 1966, and performed the first docking of two vehicles in space. It became a nail-biter, however, when a thruster became stuck on because of a short circuit. Armstrong saved the mission, proving calm in crisis, and the perfect choice to lead America’s most important mission.
“Neil never blinked, even with the best we could throw at him,” said former KSC director Jay Honeycutt, whose job was to put the Apollo 11 crew through lunar landing simulations.
“I remember him as an always smiling, confident guy. All the astronauts back then, they were the fighter pilot type of person, A-positive personality, and they didn’t like an ego,” said Bob Sieck, a KSC engineer during Gemini and Apollo and a shuttle launch director. “Neil was a little bit more calm, cool, collected and business-like. He came across that way, a little bit different than the other guys.”
He never let fame change him. In 1971, he became a professor at the University of Cincinnati. He turned down most interview requests and offers to celebrate his feat.
“For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request,” his family said Saturday. “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.”
Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, dies
Gary Strauss - USA Today
Astronaut Neil Armstrong, who uttered one of history's most famous proclamations when he became the first man to walk on the moon in 1969, died Saturday.
Armstrong was commander of the Apollo 11 mission that made the first manned lunar landing on July 20, 1969. He had undergone heart surgery Aug. 8, three days after his 82nd birthday. His family said that Armstrong had died from post-surgery complications.
"We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures,'' the family said in a statement. "Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend."
As he stepped off the lunar module and set foot on the moon's surface, he said "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,'' underscoring a centuries-old fantasy among human kind and a high point in the Cold War era space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. An estimated 600 million TV viewers watched the event, engrossed by the surreal, grainy black-and-white footage.
Saturday, President Obama hailed Armstrong as one of "the greatest American heroes — not just of his time, but of all time.''
"When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation,'' the president said in a statement. "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. And when Neil stepped foot on the surface of the moon for the first time, he delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten."
But the notoriously publicity shy Armstrong was a reluctant hero. In an era of celebrity adulation, Armstrong refused to sign autographs or grant interviews, giving only infrequent speeches. "I don't want a living memorial,'' he once said. He reluctantly joined fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in anniversary celebrations of the moon landing.
"He was the best, and I will miss him terribly,'' Collins said.
Armstrong flew Navy fighter jets during the Korean War, flying nearly 80 missions. During one flight over North Korea in 1951, the right wing of his jet clipped a cable wire. He managed to fly to friendly territory before ejecting. Armstrong later became a test pilot before joining the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as part of its second group of astronauts.
Armstrong commanded Gemini 8 in 1966, which suffered near disaster until he used a back-up system to stop an uncontrolled capsule spin and made an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Armstrong's prowess was again demonstrated during the moon landing, when it was later revealed that lunar module had just 20 seconds of fuel left when he steered to avoid large boulders before touching down in the Sea of Tranquility.
The self-described nerd downplayed his celebrity status.
"I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said a February 2000 appearance. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession."
Born in tiny Wapakoneta, Ohio, Armstrong took his first flight as a six year old, fueling a lifetime passion for aviation. He attended Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering before the Korean War, later earning a master's degree at the University of Southern California.
The lunar landing made him more popular than his hero, aviator Charles Lindbergh, but Armstrong shunned the spotlight. After walking on the moon, he lived a mostly private life, buying a farm and teaching aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979.
When he appeared in Dayton in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before 10,000 people packed into a baseball stadium. But he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon, and quickly ducked the spotlight.
Still, he expressed his concerned about Obama's 2010 space policy shift that emphasized the privatization of space travel. Armstrong said he had concerns about the plan to end manned NASA flights, which he called "misguided."
"Neil Armstrong was a pioneer of flight and that is how he would want to be remembered," says space historian John Logsdon, author of John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon. "In his mind he flew all kinds of vehicles that set record firsts, and one of them happened to be the first one on the moon."
Armstrong basically saw himself as an aviator first and foremost, part of the long tradition of American pilots going back to the Wright Brothers, Logsdon says.
"For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request,'' his family said in a Saturday statement. "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."
"He will be part of history forever," Logsdon said.
Neil Armstrong - a test pilot's test pilot
Guy Norris - Aviation Week
America and the world salute Neil Armstrong, the Apollo 11 astronaut who became the first human being to set foot on the moon and who died Aug. 25, 2012, aged 82. Inspiring millions with his actions, yet shunning the celebratory status which followed the lunar landing in July 1969, Armstrong remained an unassuming and deeply private man to the end.
Armstrong’s astonishing life in aerospace included combat missions with the U.S. Navy, flying as a test pilot for NASA and commanding the Gemini 8 and Apollo 11 missions. Back on the ground after his flying exploits, Armstrong served as Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics at NASA headquarters in Washington before becoming professor of aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati from 1971 to 1979. Along with stints in industry, he also served as vice chairman of the presidential commission that investigated the Challenger disaster in 1986, and later, in 2003, was on the panel that investigated the loss of the Columbia.
Described in a statement by his family as a “reluctant American hero”, Armstrong made few public appearances and avoided the limelight. However the statement says “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. While we mourn the loss of a very good man, we also celebrate his remarkable life and hope that it serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.”
One of the few arenas in which Armstrong appeared to be more than happy to speak however was the Society of Experimental Test Pilots (SETP). As a fellow of the Society, he was an occasional speaker and obvious felt very much at home as he shared his views and flight test experiences. One of these talks, delivered to a rapt audience at the SETP’s annual symposium in 2007, covered the development and testing of the LLRV/LLTV (lunar landing research/training vehicle). The LLRV was built to help develop systems and piloting techniques to land the Apollo Lunar Module in the low gravity environment of the moon.
After Armstrong had finished his talk, I asked him about how much the experiences of testing the LLRV – including his ejection from the LLRV-1 which crashed in May 1968 – had really prepared him for that fateful first moon landing on July 20 the following year.
The landing was one of the most dangerous and momentous phases in the history of exploration. With less than 30 seconds of fuel remaining, Armstrong – aided with altitude callouts from Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin beside him - calmly piloted the Eagle Lunar Module around large boulders to a landing in the football-sized crater to which it had been directed by the vehicle’s auto-tracker system. The heart-stopping wait for confirmation of the safe landing prompted the now famous quote from Charlie Duke (Apollo 11 flight director Gene Kranz’s Capsule Communications – CAPCOM) who said “Roger Tranquility we copy you down. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot!”
But what did Neil Armstrong think? Was he turning blue up there too? The answer, as it happened, was the typically unflappable response from a seasoned test pilot. He told me “oh we had quite a few seconds to spare – it was longer than most people think. There was really plenty of time, and it’s exactly what we’d been training for. The simulator system really worked.”
No wonder, I thought, that NASA chose this man to land Apollo 11!
..and finally a thought from his family:
"For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have 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."
John Glenn: Neil Armstrong pioneered way to moon
Marcia Dunn - Associated Press
John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, said Neil Armstrong dedicated himself to his country and will always be remembered for pioneering the way to the moon.
In a phone interview Saturday with The Associated Press, Glenn said he will miss Armstrong and noted that he was a close friend. The two astronauts — arguably NASA's most famous — both hailed from Ohio.
Glenn recalled how Armstrong had just 15 to 35 seconds of fuel remaining when he landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, with Buzz Aldrin. He also recounted Armstrong's illustrious aviation career, including his combat flying in Korea and testing of experimental aircraft. Armstrong had his pilot's license before his driver's license, Glenn said.
"When I think of Neil, I think of someone who for our country was dedicated enough to dare greatly," Glenn said.
Throughout his career as a pilot and astronaut, Armstrong "showed a skill and dedication that was just exemplary," Glenn said. "I'll miss him not only for that but just as a close personal friend."
The 91-year-old Glenn was in Columbus, Ohio, when he learned of Armstrong's death at age 82.
Just before the 50th anniversary of Glenn's orbital flight in February, Armstrong offered high praise to the elder astronaut and said Glenn had told him many times how he wished he, too, had flown to the moon on Apollo 11. While not considering himself an envious person, Glenn said this year that he makes an exception for Armstrong.
Armstrong, ever the gentleman, returned the compliment. In an email, Armstrong wrote: "I am hoping I will be 'in his shoes' and have as much success in longevity as he has demonstrated."
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."
Obama, Romney, others react to Armstrong’s passing
SpacePolitics.com
On Saturday afternoon, the family of Neil Armstrong announced that the famous astronaut had passed away at the age of 82 after complications from heart surgery he had earlier this month. Within a few hours there was an outpouring of reaction to the death of the first man to walk on the Moon, including official statements from President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
“Neil was among the greatest of American heroes – not just of his time, but of all time,” said President Obama in a White House statement. “Today, Neil’s spirit of discovery lives on in all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploring the unknown – including those who are ensuring that we reach higher and go further in space. That legacy will endure – sparked by a man who taught us the enormous power of one small step.”
Obama summarized that sentiment in a tweet from his campaign account, @BarackObama; the “-bo” indicates the tweet was written by Obama himself:
Barack Obama - @BarackObama - Neil Armstrong was a hero not just of his time, but of all time. Thank you, Neil, for showing us the power of one small step. -bo
Gov. Romney also issued a statement from his campaign mourning Armstrong’s passing. “Neil Armstrong today takes his place in the hall of heroes. 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 added that he “met and spoke” with Armstrong just a few weeks ago, although he does not mention the subject of that conversation.
Romney also provided a brief summary of his statement via Twitter:
Mitt Romney - @MittRomney - Neil Armstrong today takes his place in the hall of heroes. The moon will miss its first son of earth.
In Congress, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) issued a brief statement. “A true hero has returned to the Heavens to which he once flew,” he said. “Ohio has lost one of her proudest sons. Humanity has gained a legend.”
On Facebook, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) posted a brief note about the death of Armstrong. “He will always be remembered as one of the most iconic pioneers of the NASA community – dedicated to the team that helped him achieve glory for us all,” she wrote.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) also provided a brief comment in a statement via the Miami Herald. “Neil Armstrong understood that we should reach beyond the stars. His ‘one giant leap for mankind’ was taken by a giant of a man.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) also expressed his condolences in a statement while taking a bigger-picture view. “America, the space community and the entire world have lost a courageous pioneer. One needs to look no further than the various foreign currencies in the donation box at Washington’s National Air and Space Museum to understand what our space program means not only for our country but for all of humanity.”
US astronaut Neil Armstrong dies, first man on Moon
BBC News
US astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, has died aged 82.
A statement from his family says he died from complications from heart surgery he had earlier this month.
He set foot on the Moon on 20 July 1969, famously describing the event as "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind".
US President Barack Obama said Armstrong was "among the greatest of American heroes - not just of his time, but of all time".
Last November he received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest US civilian award.
He was the commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft. More than 500 million TV viewers around the world watched its touchdown on the lunar surface.
Armstrong and fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the moon, 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.
'Reluctant hero'
Mr Aldrin told the BBC's Newshour programme: "It's very sad indeed that we're not able to be together as a crew on the 50th anniversary of the mission… [I will remember him] as a very capable commander."
Apollo 11 was Armstrong's last space mission. In 1971, he left the US space agency Nasa to teach aerospace engineering.
Born in 1930 and raised in Ohio, Armstrong took his first flight aged six with his father and formed a lifelong passion for flying.
He flew Navy fighter jets during the Korean War in the 1950s, and joined the US space programme in 1962
Correspondents say Armstrong remained modest and never allowed himself to be caught up in the glamour of space exploration.
"I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer," he said in February 2000, in a rare public appearance.
In a statement, his family praised him as a "reluctant American hero" who had "served his nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut".
The statement did not say where Armstrong died.
He had surgery to relieve four blocked coronary arteries on 7 August
NASA's pioneering astronauts: Where are they now?
Associated Press
As space exploration has become more common and the number of astronauts has risen past 300, many names have faded into the background. But some will forever be associated with the golden age of space exploration. Some examples:
From 1969's Apollo 11, the first manned moon landing mission:
· Buzz Aldrin: Lunar module pilot for Apollo 11. Second man on the moon after commander Neil Armstrong. Left NASA in in 1971 and returned to Air Force. Wrote several books including "Return to Earth" and "Men from Earth." Advocate for future U.S. space exploration and frequent lecturer. Age: 82.
· Neil Armstrong: Commander of Apollo 11 mission and first human to set foot on the moon. Left NASA in 1971, taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati, and later became chairman of electronic systems companies. Died Aug. 25 at age 82.
· Michael Collins: Command module pilot on Apollo 11 and circled the moon while colleagues Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed. Left NASA in 1970 and became first director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Wrote "Carrying the Fire," considered one of the best insider space books. Age: 81.
Some other notable astronauts:
· Scott Carpenter: Second American to orbit the Earth in 1962. With John Glenn, surviving member of NASA's original Mercury 7 astronauts. Gave the famous send off - "Godspeed, John Glenn." Involved in Navy's SeaLab program, and spent 30 days under the ocean in 1965. Left the Navy in 1969. Age: 87.
· Eugene Cernan: Commander of Apollo 17 in 1972; last astronaut to walk on the moon. Second person to walk in space in 1966 as a pilot on Gemini 9. Retired from the Navy in 1976 and later started an aerospace consulting company in Houston. Age: 78
· John Glenn: First American to orbit the Earth in 1962, circling three times in five hours. Left NASA in 1965 and retired from the Marine Corps the next year. Became a Democratic U.S. senator from Ohio and ran briefly for president in 1984. Return to space in 1998 for a nine-day mission aboard space shuttle Discovery, becoming at age 77 the oldest person in space. Turned 91 in July.
· Jim Lovell: Commander of Apollo 13 in 1970, his fourth space flight. Oxygen tank in the spaceship exploded and the moon mission was aborted. Left NASA in 1973 and became a business executive. Age: 84.
· Edgar Mitchell: The sixth man to walk on the moon in 1971 after maneuvering the landing module from Apollo 14. Made two excursions to collect lunar samples with Alan Shepard. Left NASA in 1972 and went on to become an educator, lecturer and consultant. Age: 81.
· Alan Shepard: First American in space; made a 15-minute suborbital flight in 1961. Returned to space as commander of Apollo 14 in 1971; used a lunar sample scoop with an attached golf-club head to hit a ball on the moon. Retired from NASA in 1974 and went into private business in Houston. Died in 1998 at age 74.
· Jack Swigert Jr.: Pilot for Apollo 13 in 1970, a last-minute replacement after another astronaut came down with the measles. Mission to moon was aborted after an oxygen tank on the spaceship exploded. Left NASA in 1977. Elected to Congress in November 1982; died of bone cancer the next month at age 51.
· John Young: First person to fly into space from Earth six times - seven times counting his lunar liftoff in 1972. Flew two Gemini and two Apollo missions. Commander of the first space shuttle flight, aboard Columbia in 1981. Final space flight in 1983 aboard Columbia. Retired from NASA in 2004. Age: 81.
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