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Astronaut Neil Armstrong Has Died
dsinc writes "Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon, has died. NBC News broke the news, without giving other details. Neil was recovering from a heart-bypass surgery he had had a couple of weeks ago. Sad news, marking the end of a glorious and more optimistic era... RIP, Neil." Also at Reuters.
And a great pilot. You will be missed.
One of the greatest men of the last century - thank you for your contributions to mankind.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Actually, think this is a more obligatory XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/202/
I'm too young to remember his accomplishments firsthand, but because of his accomplishments with the help of the entire infrastructure of the space race, I was able to grow up with the dream of living in a future in which I could visit the moon and mars... Now I feel that dream has died right along with him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
And a loss for all mankind.
Godspeed, Mr. Armstrong.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Mr. Armstrong, I watched you jumping about on the moon when I was nine years old. It was unbelievably cool! The future seemed to be one of boundless possibility.
Now I'm older, and more cynical, and the world hasn't really turned into the place I thought it would be at this point - but whenever I think about your trip to the moon I'm suddenly a wide-eyed nine-year-old that still believes anything can happen. It gives me hope that mankind really will solve it's most vexing problems, once it finally decides to do so.
Thank you for everything, sir. I hope your eternity is a pleasant one.
#DeleteChrome
Technically most of the astronauts and people involved with NASA/Apollo missions were NOT boomers.
Neil was born in '30, while the Boomer generation was from '46-'64.
Moon landing was in '69, so the Boomers would have been at most 23 yrs old at the time, so they would have just been finishing college and entering the workforce.
The Boomers were responsible though for the eventual budget cuts to NASA and education, but still reaped the benefits of it's hay day.
A moment of silence for one of those who used math and fire to punch a hole in the sky.
There's no proof that you actually have a brain, either. Funny how you can sit there typing a message that can be broadcast instantly all around the world from your house, on a computer that is engineered to sub-nanometer precision, you can take medication that is engineered on a molecular level, and you can drive a car made of composites that were only dreamed of 50 years ago, yet you refuse to believe in the Apollo program.
So what, pioneer, voyager, viking and all the rest are fake, too? Curiosity is fake? To what end would the government continue to fake all these programs - considering the glee with which it cuts NASA funding wouldn't it be easier to just not to fake them in the first place?
I was little during the moon landing and thought it was pretty cool! It was only later when I came to appreciate the hazards and the guts to do the moon landing.
If we do become a space faring people to future generations he will likely be the best remembered American. Name anyone that accomplished anything greater in the last 200+ years? There is only one person in all of human history that will be remembered as the first person to step foot on another world. Even to this day it's likely the greatest accomplishment of us as a species let alone as a nation.
Sigh. Not to minimize Armstrong's achievements — which took courage, brains, and skill — but he himself would probably wince at your hype. One of the greatest men in the 20th century? He led a historic space mission. That's a big deal, but it's not in the same class as wiping out smallpox, discovering relativity, defeating Nazi Germany, holding a nation together with a third of its workers unemployed, laying the foundations of the computer revolution...
Truly an American icon.
I grant you that, but as a non-American I'd like to add: Truly a human icon.
Hundreds and thousands of years from now, people who made the first moon landing possible will live on through the name of Mr. Armstrong, who will continue to appear in the history books. Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.
Sig
It would be nice if the Chinese were willing to do that. Maybe as a tourist attraction?
I agree that he would probably have considered it hype as well, but I disagree that he wasn't in the same class. He inspired a generation of kids to become engineers, pilots, and astronauts. He rallied the entire globe around a peaceful cause. He was a leader. And he was the face of NASA, and the proud face of what America was capable of. And in 1969, in the middle of the Cold War and the Vietnam War, amidst huge problems around the country with race riots in Watts and Minneapolis and Chicago and Baltimore, here was this Great American Hero that we could all agree had made a remarkable achievement. We needed Neil Armstrong to be who he was.
John
The first true World Hero. At the center of a great collective effort they put the right man. And he never wanted to steal the credit from the team. You will be missed.
Other people went to the moon after Armstrong, not many, but several. It was really halted because it was/is so dangerous, expensive, and there weren't any yields from the moon that we can't get from orbit, which is vastly safer.
I call BS on the idea that we have the tech/means for a moon base right now.
Cursorily is only like the 2nd non-terrestrial craft to use something other then solar for power. And a moon base would need a fuck ton more power then Curiosity could produce. (almost half it's total weight is devoted to the power system)
Plus you have to take into account Oxygen, Water, Food. We can recycle some, but it's far from enough to be self sufficient. They would still need regular supply runs from Earth, like the ISS.
How about cosmic radiation? The moon is after all outside the van allen belt. And even with shielding, the previous missions were timed to keep radiation exposure to a minimum.
The most ideal plans at current call for a moon base in 2014, with a four man team, rotating out due to the previous issues I noted and regular supply runs. (Near the pole so it'll get near constant sunlight for solar power)
I was fortunate to get a first hand viewing on TV of all the Apollo missions while bouncing on the knee of my father. The Apollo 11 astronauts were my first heroes and not long after I could read I enjoyed every book, magazine and encyclopedia article I found about them and their mission.
Armstrong is the model on how to be a hero; do something exemplary and treat it as just another day at the office. Embrace knowledge, challenge your mind and enjoy your job. And when it's over, it is over. Armstrong shied away from the public spotlight and certainly passed on what would have been many lucrative opportunities to cash-in on his fame. Instead, he remained pretty much the same person after the mission as before.
Sad day today, to know of the loss of a great person.
We absolutely have the means to do it. We lack the will. Its expensive as hell and the world runs on cost-effciency. A moon base is the first step in the ultimate insurance policy and people dont want to pay up.
Good-bye
Truly an American icon.
I grant you that, but as a non-American I'd like to add: Truly a human icon.
Mod parent up. Gagarin and Armstrong regardless of their home country were, and maybe still are a great inspiration for millions of kids. Rest in peace.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
For very obvious reasons it cannot be staged. The biggest one being the Soviets.
The whole thing was a HUGE publicity stunt and a big dick waving contest between the US and the USSR. Considering how easy it was for the USSR to get spies to some key positions in the US, I don't doubt that they had a pretty good view on the whole moon program, too. A chance to expose that program, a program that the whole nation dedicated considerable resources to and that was watched by people all over the globe, as staged would have been an absolutely priceless PR victory for the USSR. If they only had had a HINT of a chance that this could have been debunked, they certainly would have jumped on that opportunity. Everyone all around the globe had their eyes on that event. You really think they would have let the opportunity slide to expose the US as fakes?
It seems to me that trying to stage it and keep it hushed up would have required more resources than simply doing it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't want to steer this discussion away from the topic, but this is exactly why no theist will ever be able to convince me about the "truths" of his religion. How am I supposed to believe that those word-of-mouth stories that are thousands of years old could be true when people believe in such ludicrous things as "the moon hoax", despite the fact that it was a much more recent event and there are tons of material evidence to support the fact that there was *no* super-competent con man who supposedly managed to trick thousands of engineers into thinking that they are not building a fake rocket and that they are not receiving fake telemetry not from the Moon? People *want* to believe in the irrational, they find something irrational everywhere they look. Human capacity for self-deception never ceases to amaze me.
Ezekiel 23:20
While I do understand that the US is in financial difficulty, it strikes me as important that the first man to walk on the Moon---on another celestial sphere---should be given a significant send off.
Frankly, I think the funeral should be at least on par with that expected for a _sitting_ president, and probably beyond. It may well end up being the most important funeral, or the most important man, in the history of the United States, if not the world.
Neil Armstrong deserves a state procession---an international procession. America and the World owe both he and his generation that much at least.
May the Maths Be with you!
Not just a role model for kids in USA, but all through out the world.
For once here we have a true world hero.
A million thanks Mr. Armstrong.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
related:
Neil Armstrong - Apollo 11 - July, 1969
Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin - Apollo 11 - July, 1969
Charles "Pete" Conrad - Apollo 12 - November, 1969
Alan Bean - Apollo 12 - November, 1969
Alan Shepard - Apollo 14 - February, 1971
Edgar Mitchell - Apollo 14 - February, 1971
David Scott - Apollo 15 - July, 1971
James Irwin - Apollo 15 - July, 1971
John Young - Apollo 16 - April, 1972 (also on Apollo 10, without landing)
Charles Duke - Apollo 16 - April, 1972
Eugene Cernan - Apollo 17 - December, 1972 (also on Apollo 10, without landing)
Harrison Schmitt - Apollo 17 - December, 1972
I was 10, the day they landed I was so absorbed with the TV I sat on a plate of spaghetti and meat balls. It's hard to describe how important the TV was to people that day, the only other event I can think of that has come close to gluing that many people that strongly to a TV is 911. Every boy at my school wanted to be an astronaut in the same way we all wanted to be Superman, I think one Aussie eventually made a trip on the shuttle, still no sign of Superman. I do think it inspired millions of kids but it also set expectation too high and by the end of the 70's kids my age had worked out they were not going to be an astronaut and many of them lost interest, rather than being glued to their TV on the last moon shot they were calling the entire Apollo project a waste of money, nothing more than cold war saber rattling.
Big science is bigger than ever these days, and with the internet it's cheaper and faster. It just does things more quietly, more of of background hum than a climatic touchdown. A Higgs bosun here, an MRI machine there, an internet everywhere. Some amazing space pics, some dire warnings, and all but forgotten smallpox. I agree we could do with a lot more of it, but it's how we use it that counts.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I was literally less than 24 hours old when Apollo 11 launched. I spent my childhood years dreaming of an upcoming adult life where being an astronaut would be as common as being a plumber, or an accountant. I eagerly read The High Frontier, eagerly anticipating orbital space stations and living in one.
I watched the Challenger explosion as a teenager, and soon after watched Congress, then subsequent administrations, all of them - they went and fucked up the whole space idea beyond all recognition. I eventually gave up those dreams with heavy resignation as a young adult.
Throughout it all? Armstrong, Aldrin, and many others among them kept the dream alive. Because of them, we now have Zubrin, Musk, Bigelow, and a whole cadre of people working like hell to make the original dream into reality. I'll likely be dead of old age before that original childhood dream becomes reality, but with a little hope and a lot of work, it may yet get there.
Armstrong was one of the pioneers. Certainly, you could say he lucked out, yadda yadda... but I disagree. His coolness under pressure made Apollo 11's mission possible (and successful) when nearly any other astronaut would have aborted too early or gotten everyone killed.
Godspeed, Mr. Armstrong.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
You must be young. There are books from the 70s and 80s that address everything you're complaining about with viable solutions. Cosmic rays are a problem? Fine, live in buried habitats. That's been a feature of every moon base design I've ever read, except for The Millenial Project, which recommended a water shield instead (and included proposals for where to get the millions of kilograms of water necessary to shield an entire crater). Those designs even included ways of piping in filtered sunlight, so the residents wouldn't suffer from depression induced by light-deprivation.
Need power? Fine, land a nuclear fission reactor. Doesn't matter much which specific technology. We have it, and it doesn't even have to be engineered to survive operating in hard vacuum, because it can be buried too, in a pressurized chamber. You'd most likely use one of the designs used in naval submarines or aircraft carriers, since they're already designed to travel well.
Oxygen is easy. Even without any system whatsoever for regenerating oxygen from carbon dioxide, we know how to fly big tanks of compressed oxygen. And all the serious proposals included such regeneration systems, many of them incorporating plants.
Which leads to the next thing. Food. NASA has already done studies of what species of wheat would best grow in lunar conditions using minimally improved lunar material as soil. There's an entire corpus of material on the subject of how we might develop food self-sufficiency at a lunar base, and it's fairly obvious that it's possible. It's just a matter of GOING and doing the in situ research necessary to prove which ideas actually work. Until then, the solution of putting food on rockets and launching it is technology we have, and understand very very well. SpaceX just did precisely that, delivering to the International Space Station. It's so easy, it can be done on a budget.
Water is even easier. The human metabolism actually produces excess water as a byproduct, and treating water is something that's exceedingly well understood. It's not even remotely rocket science. It's science-based, but it doesn't take a scientist to run a wastewater treatment plant. It barely even takes a person, anymore. The ones in common use across the world are largely automated. Most of them don't even have very many moving parts. You'd be amazed what holding ponds in sunlight can do. Meanwhile, getting a system going with sufficient free water to start with is just as easy as solving food. You put a booster under it and you launch it. We know how to do this. Most serious proposals for putting massive amounts of water into space call for freezing it first, since it behaves better under launch conditions as a solid. Yes, people have actually considered that.
In short, we do in fact have ALL of the technology required to establish a long-term habitable lunar base. Becoming self-sufficient is then only a matter of additional research, which can only be done at an inhabited base. And we already know what research must be done. It's just a question of actually performing the experiments.
And doing it at all is solely a question of money, which is solely a question of will. There's more than enough free-floating capital doing absolutely nothing on Earth except generating commodity bubbles. The people who own it don't have the imagination to spend it.