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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.
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RIP Neil.
http://xkcd.com/893/
One of the greatest men of the last century - thank you for your contributions to mankind.
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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.
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I urge you to go tell Buzz Aldrin your opinions.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And a loss for all mankind.
Godspeed, Mr. Armstrong.
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The boomers were teenagers or just graduating college when Armstrong walked on the moon. It was the generation before. There's a reason they call them "the greatest generation".
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.
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At least NBC fixed the headline. It first read "Astronaut Neil Young, first man to walk on moon, dies at age 82."
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.
Everyone knows the real Neil Armstrong never left the moon, who do you think started building the first military moon base, and was later put in charge of it? In fact the entire Apollo program was designed to deliver astronauts to the moon, and then fake an Earth landing and use body double to replace them. Did you see how big the rocket needed to get all that crap to the moon was? And how small the lunar module was, no way did it have the power to escape to orbit and enough fuel to return to Earth. The Moon landings were real but the Earth landings are a HOAX!
A moment of silence for one of those who used math and fire to punch a hole in the sky.
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.
A class act. And a great pilot. You will be missed.
Navy pilot - combat veteran, test/research pilot, aerospace engineer, university professor. Of course he was most famous for being an astronaut, commander of the Apollo 11 mission and the first to walk on the moon.
He inspired generations of scientists and engineers. Because of Armstrong and his fellow astronauts my friends and I in elementary school knew math and science were important and were highly motivated to pay attention. We had real heroes are role models.
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.
Truly an American icon.
I grant you that, but as a non-American I'd like to add: Truly a human icon.
Never met Neil Armstrong. I suspect one day we will have a memorial park at tranquility base.
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
He was non-military, for one.
He was a former Naval Aviator who flew combat missions in Korea. This experience probably made a significant contribution to his ability to remain focused and calm.
Retired is not "non-military".
I was 4 and remember being rushed inside by my parents and grandparents. Many people were crowded around our TV, as not everyone had one yet.
That blurry, slow, staticy picture would forever inspire me to love space and science.
We need more of this for our future. Money better spent on building and science as opposed to destruction....
..........FULL STOP.
Neil wasn't the quarterback, he was the football.
When the football has a bad spin or tumbles it does not correct the spin/rotation itself. Armstrong did so with a Gemini capsule that was in danger of going out of control. Similarly he had to land Apollo 11 manually when the computers were hazarding the ship. He was a pilot, not a passenger.
Good Luck Mr. Armstrong.....RIP
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Yeah, and they gave birth to some of the worst brats ever - Us. (I'm a late boomer, so I'm part of that generation, but I try to do better.)
Study the Bible a bit, and you'll see that the Hebrew nation survived every adversity thrown against it, except one. Prosperity - got them every time. Seems to me that has something to do with our current situation.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You're thinking of Louis Armstrong.
You are getting people confused...Louis Armstrong was the guy who landed on the moon.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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.
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!
Somebody had to be second.
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?
Interesting read though I'd consider Gemini 8 spinning out of control to have been pretty close to killing astronauts, couple of years earlier too. Of course it was Neil who saved that mission as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_8#Emergency
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