Geordie
Geordie
CINCINNATI - Mr Neil Armstrong was a soft-spoken engineer who became a global hero when as a steely-nerved pilot he made "one giant leap for mankind" with a small step onto the moon. The modest man, who had people on Earth entranced and awed from almost a quarter-million miles away, but credited others for the feat, died yesterday. He was 82.
Mr Armstrong died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, his family said in a statement. Mr Armstrong had had a bypass operation this month, according to NASA. His family did not say where he died; he had lived in suburban Cincinnati.
Mr 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 becoming the first person to set foot on the surface are etched in history books and the memories of those who heard them in a live broadcast.
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Mr Armstrong said.
(Mr Armstrong insisted later that he had said "a" before man, but said he, too, could not hear it in the version that went to the world.)
In those first few moments on the moon, during the climax of a heated space race with the Soviet Union, Mr 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," Mr Armstrong told an Australian television interviewer this year.
Mr Armstrong and Mr 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," Mr Armstrong once said.
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.
Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA's forerunner and an astronaut, Mr 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."
Fellow Ohioan and astronaut John Glenn, one of Mr Armstrong's closest friends, recalled yesterday how Mr Armstrong was down to the last 15 seconds to 35 seconds of fuel when he finally brought the Eagle down on the Sea of Tranquility.
"That showed a dedication to what he was doing that was admirable," Mr Glenn said.
A man who kept away from cameras, Mr 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 emphasised private companies developing spaceships. He testified before Congress, and in an email to The Associated Press, Mr Armstrong said he had "substantial reservations," and 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".
Mr Armstrong was among the greatest of American heroes, Mr 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," Mr Obama said.
Mr Obama's Republican opponent Mitt Romney echoed those sentiments, calling Mr 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," Mr Romney said.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden recalled Mr 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," Mr Bolden said in a statement.
Mr 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 10,000 people packed into a 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 Mr Glenn, by then a senator, to lay wreaths on the graves of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Mr Glenn introduced Mr Armstrong and noted it was 34 years to the day that Mr Armstrong had walked on the moon.
"Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?" Mr Armstrong quipped, as if he had not given it a thought.
At another joint appearance, the two embraced and Mr Glenn commented: "To this day, he's the one person on earth I'm truly, truly envious of."
Mr 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, Mr Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his southwestern Ohio farm. Mr Aldrin said in his book Men From Earth that Mr Armstrong was one of the quietest, most private men he had ever met.
In the Australian interview, Mr Armstrong acknowledged that "now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things".
At the time of the flight's 40th anniversary, Mr Armstrong again was low-key, telling a gathering that the space race was "the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus USSR. It did allow both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration".
Mr Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Mr 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".
Mr Derek Elliott, curator of the Smithsonian Institution's United States Air and Space Museum from 1982 to 1992, said the moonwalk probably marked the high point of space exploration.
The manned lunar landing was a boon to the prestige of the United States, which had been locked in a space race with the former Soviet Union, and re-established US pre-eminence in science and technology, Mr Elliott said.
"The fact that we were able to see it and be a part of it means that we are in our own way witnesses to history," he said.
The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President John F Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Mr 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 US 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," Mr 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," Mr 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, Mr Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia 60 miles overhead while Mr Armstrong and Mr Aldrin went to the moon's surface.
Mr Collins told NASA yesterday that he will miss Armstrong terribly, spokesman Bob Jacobs tweeted.
TODAYonline | World | Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies at 82
