Neil Armstrong (1930 – 2012)
Former test pilot and astronaut, who was the commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969, in which he and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to land on the moon, and he was the first man to walk on the moon.
It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it.
As the first human to land on any world outside the Earth, and probably the first living creature of any sort to come from the Earth and reach the Moon, his legacy will be safe as long as intelligent life survives in this corner of the cosmos.
We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth.
At few other moments has one person become the fulcrum of such weighty imperatives — to win a famous victory for America and vindicate a vast investment of national treasure, to penetrate a hostile frontier, to master a new technology, to navigate a harrowing descent to the unknown — all in the glare of rapt global attention. By the time he landed in the Sea of Tranquility, the country boy from Ohio had already spent most of his adult life in jobs where intensity of focus and the threat of violent death were part of his daily routine. He was used to all of that. It was, instead, the loss of privacy that appalled him. He loved to fly, and he loved his country, and in the name of those passions he was willing to risk not only his hide but a piece of his soul. Only a piece, however — a mere finger's worth — and no more. ... Those who know him say he is a smart and intensely private, even shy, man determined to live life on his own terms despite having floated down that ladder into the public domain. Whether as an astronaut, naval combat aviator, test pilot, civil servant, engineer, absent-minded professor, gentleman farmer, businessman, civic booster, amateur musician, husband or father, Neil Armstrong has followed his own code.
Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his Nation proudly, as a navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut. He remained an advocate of aviation and exploration throughout his life and never lost his boyhood wonder of these pursuits.
Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
All the Apollo people were working hard, working long hours, and were dedicated to making certain everything they did, they were doing to the very best of their ability.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am in the position of a pilot without his checklist, so I’ll have to wing it. … [Prior to the Apollo missions,] no one knew what kind of person could be persuaded to take the trip. Prisoners were suggested. Soldiers could be ordered. Photographers could take pictures — and they’re expendable. Doctors understood the limits of human physiology. Finally, both sides picked pilots.
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. [...] Besides being one of America's greatest explorers, Neil carried himself with a grace and humility that was an example to us all. When President Kennedy challenged the nation to send a human to the Moon, Neil Armstrong accepted without reservation. As we enter this next era of space exploration, we do so standing on the shoulders of Neil Armstrong. We mourn the passing of a friend, fellow astronaut and true American hero.
Space has not changed but technology has, in many cases, improved dramatically. A good example is digital technology where today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems.
America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a programme which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal.
He was the best, and I will miss him terribly.
It would be impossible to overstate the appreciation that we on the crew feel for your dedication and the quality of your work.
We were involved in doing what many thought to be impossible, putting humans on Earth’s moon.
During my testimony (to the House Science and Technology Committee) in May I said, “Some question why Americans should return to the Moon. “After all,” they say “we have already been there.” I find that mystifying. It would be as if 16th century monarchs proclaimed that “we need not go to the New World, we have already been there.” Or as if President Thomas Jefferson announced in 1803 that Americans “need not go west of the Mississippi, the Lewis and Clark Expedition has already been there.”
The authors foresaw my part of the adventure, but your part was beyond their comprehension.
The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on Earth.
I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks but for the ledger of our daily work.
I thought, well. when I step off it's just going to be a little step—a step from there down to there—but then I thought about all those 400,000 people who had given me the opportunity to make that step and thought it's going to be a big something for all those folks and, indeed for a lot of others that weren't even involved in the project, so it was kind of a simple correlation.
Science fiction writers thought it would be possible. H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and other authors found ways to get people to the moon. But none of those writers foresaw any possibility of the lunar explorers being able to communicate with Earth, transmit data, position information, or transmit moving pictures of what they saw back to Earth.