Neil Armstrong RIP

One last step...

An Armstrong to admire, perhaps?

ATB from George

I was only six when he walked on the moon - I remember watching it on our tiny B&W telly with my late father, who was preserving the whole thing for posterity by recording it on his new Philips reel-to-reel tape recorder (by holding a mic up to the TV speaker!). To many of my generation/age, Armstrong was the ultimate hero, someone you desperately wanted to be.

He was a brilliant pilot, ice-cool under pressure, and from everything I've seen, a remarkably modest man. He achievement will never be matched, let alone surpassed.

It really feels like an era has passed. It's very sad...

I was seven at the time, and we definitely did not watch the tele coverage.

My Norwegian mother regarded the whole Apollo thing as an extension of Nazi experimentation via Werner von Braun, and hence it was a complete non-subject at the time in our house - even to the point of turning off the BBC News at Ten to Six on the TV..

But the man himself was modesty personified, and he was probably a really nice and admirable man in reality. Armstrong, i mean.

ATB from George

How brave do you have to be to sit on top of rocket and hope it don't turn into a bomb?

R.I.P. Neil, bon voyage.

 This (below) is from the Telegraph's Obits page. Oops!

Neil Armstrong

 

First American woman in space, who showed 'millions of little girls that they can be heroes and explorers'

25 Aug 2012

To be a child in the United States during the 50's was to feel safe, enjoy the comfort of plenty, and to look forward to all the possibilities that the future held. Cars were big, ideas were big. We would fly to work in our private helicopters and enjoy all the bounties of science. It was an amazing time. With the space race of the 60's that future seemed on the way. Apollo 11 was remarkable. It has been said that the effort could not have happened any sooner and could well  have happened decades later were it not for the circumstance of will brought about by a fortuitous advance in technology melding with a competition of ideology. I doubt many of us yet appreciate all these years later what it must have felt like to sit, some 43 years ago, on top of that Saturn 5 rocket in that cramped little tin box of a capsule on its way to the moon. Remarkable. 

Neil Armstrong represented the cool competence and optimism of that time. When I recently heard of his heart surgery it felt like how could that be? There was a feeling of dread and the passage of time. So much has changed in the intervening years, those changes starting even as Apollo 11 lifted off, and the world is a different place. There's now a lot of doubt to go along with any optimism. That fact alone makes the loss of Neil Armstrong difficult. He reminds you of that other time.

May he rest in peace. He made his country proud and I hope he did the same for all humanity.

A childhood hero for me. And for many. A remarkable man. 

I was 11 and in the hospital - so I watched it on the tiny little B&W TV that you could rent and attached to the foot of the hospital bed.  A week later I watched Ted Kennedy make his Chappaquiddick speech on that same TV.  The other kid in the room had only two 45 RPM records for his portable record player; "Aquarius" and "Theme from Hawaii Five-0".  (Which he played at least a million times!) 

What a time capsule of the age, and Neil Armstrong transcended it all, in an age where astronauts were bigger than rock stars, he was the biggest star of them all.  A hero's hero, and what we all wished as young boys that we could become. (And of which I have failed miserably!)

RIP Commander Armstrong...

+1 Superb post ... 

RIP Neil Armstrong 

Great post.

Europe was going through a rough time with some countries still  trying to rebuild themselves. But nothing could detratct from the fact this was an amazing achievement for all mankind.

R..I.P.

KR

Tony

He had a complete lack of self-aggrandisement. My kind of hero.

I think that Armstrong and his cohorts were the brave and manipulated pawns in the bigger game that was about political muscularity - even involving Nazi scientific knowledge gained at horrible expense - in a competition that was called the Cold War. No disrespect to those brave men, but I see the whole Moon landing thing as a less than zero net gain effort unless it could be argued that it helped stave off WW III.

ATB from George

Neil Armstrong remains perhaps the greatest hero for all mankind and it is hard to imagine him as anything other than that young, vibrant, brilliant test pilot and adventurer he was on that day in 1969.  His timing was perfect in that as others have said putting a man on the moon was impossible until that time due to technological limitations and seems unlikely now in a world ruled by beancounters.

My Mother tells me she kept me up to watch the moon landing aged about 4 months live on TV though of course I have no recollection of that.  He certainly inspired me when I saw it later though although I will never be one tenth the pilot he was.

God speed Neil, may your journey in the next life be as successful as it was in this one.

Jonathan

God speed Neil, may your journey in the next life be as successful as it was in this one.

Jonathan

Well stated

ATB from George

That's a bit philistine, George.

Haven't people dreamed of visiting the moon for thousands of years? The Cold War merely provided the political will to quickly (just eight years - an astonishing achievement) develop the means to do it.

Since the ancients we have had political vanity projects that led nowhere. The Moon Landings are just one example, and the politicians garner the popularity, the little man pays the tax, and people elevated to herioc status by the system take the human risk.

Really, one has to stop being so taken in by the media, which is run by the same people that finance the election of governements.

ATB from George

I remember being at school watching the moon landing [on the little black & white TV set.]

Those guys really amazed me.

But i was very glad when they returned home safe and sound.

Neil Armstrong may have gone where no man had gone before,

but now he's gone where we will all go one day...

well... if you're good that is : )

Debs

The documentary film 'In The Shadow Of The Moon' interviews the surviving astronauts (except Armstrong) and for me portrayed the era, and the men, brilliantly.

The men landing on the moon is one of my earliest memories. We were driving home late in the evening and I was asleep in the backseat. I remember my mother waking my brother and I up and telling us. We both stared at the clear and ful moon through the back window for ages after that, and after a while I told my parents I thought I  could see them! It is so vivid that I almost wonder if it is actually true, but my parents have confirmed it.

I was 4 1/2.

Bruce

On the day of the moon landing a group of us were driving into Yugoslavia (as was) having spent a few days coming down through Europe & we sat with the border guards in their little hut watching the pictures on an old B&W TV, wildly congratulating each other when man first stepped on the moon.

A wonderful day indeed and Neil Armstrong became everyone's hero. An incredibly brave man and an inspirational figure for us all. 

+1.  Just a bit... 

There were numerous spin off technologies that came from the Apollo program. Advances in micro-electronics, miniaturization of all kinds of technologies, including computers, resulted from NASA's investment in space technologies.  Medical technologies (kidney dialysis machines and MRI scanners) were also advanced, albeit indirectly, by the investments in space exploration.  In addition to these direct, tangible benefits, what about all of the thousands of young people who were inspired to pursue careers in science because they witnessed Apollo 11, and for the first time, believed that anything was possible?

And let's not loose site of our (hopefully very) long-term goal: survival.  It is 100% certain that we humans will become extinct if we stay indefinitely here. Now, hopefully we still have a few billion years before the Sun becomes a red giant and engulfs the planet.  But given how we are currently treating our environment, who's to say the date this planet can no longer sustain life won't be a lot sooner?

Colonizing another solar system is our only option.  If we don't achieve this goal, then everything we do, our entire history, will be meaningless.  Is there a more noble goal than trying to avert our own extinction?

Hook

Recent interview => http://thebottomline.cpaaustralia.com.au/

/david