Neil Armstrong, a self-described “nerdy” engineer, became a global hero when as a steely nerved US pilot he made “one giant leap for mankind” with the first step on the moon. The modest man who entranced and awed people on Earth has died. He was 82.
Armstrong died on Saturday following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, a statement from his family said. It did not say where he died.
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. His first words after setting foot on the surface are etched in history books and in the memories of those who heard them in a live broadcast.
Photo: Reuters
“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Armstrong said.
In those first few moments on the moon, during the climax of a heated space race with the Soviet Union, 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.
“It was special and memorable, but it was only instantaneous because there was work to do,” Armstrong told an Australian television interviewer this year.
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.
The moonwalk marked the US’ victory in the Cold War space race that began on Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, a satellite that sent shock waves around the world.
An estimated 600 million people — a fifth of the world’s population — watched and listened to the moon landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.
Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerized. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to watch on TV.
Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA’s forerunner and an astronaut, Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamor of the space program.
“I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer,” he said in February 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 oral histories for NASA, said Armstrong fit every requirement the space agency needed for the first man to walk on the moon, especially because of his engineering skills and the way he handled celebrity by shunning it.
“I think his genius was in his reclusiveness,” Brinkley said. “He was the ultimate hero in an era of corruptible men.”
A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about US President Barack Obama’s space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasized private companies developing spaceships.
NASA chief Charles Bolden recalled Armstrong’s grace and humility in a statement on Saturday.
“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 issued by the White House, Obama said Armstrong was one of the greatest of US heroes, “not just of his time, but of all time.”
Armstrong’s modesty and self-effacing manner never faded.
When he appeared in Dayton, Ohio, in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before 10,000 people, but he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon and quickly ducked out of the spotlight.
He later joined former astronaut and US senator John Glenn to lay wreaths on the graves of airplane inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright. Glenn introduced Armstrong and said it was 34 years to the day that Armstrong had walked on the moon.
“Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?” Armstrong quipped, as if he had not given it a thought.
At another joint appearance, the two embraced and 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 Ohio farm. Aldrin said in his book Men from Earth that Armstrong was one of the quietest, most private men he had ever met.
In the Australian interview, Armstrong said 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.”
Glenn said on Saturday that Armstrong had had a number of close calls in his career. He recalled how Armstrong had only between 15 and 35 seconds of fuel remaining when he landed on the moon. He called Armstrong’s skill and dedication “just exemplary.”
The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that US President John 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 Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the US into space the previous month.
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