Rest Easy Neil Armstrong

I just finished his biography this summer written by James Hansen. Very good book about an exceptional man.

GJS
 
A huge loss. I'm a NASA nut and wish we, as Americans, would put more into our space programs...it's so important. Neil was a role model who will be missed.
 
One small step for man, a giant loss for mankind. His footprints will outlast any of us, in both a figurative and a very literal sense.
 
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So spooky -

I am sitting in exactly the same spot in a tiny Austrian village where about 3 months ago I was talking to a friend about Charlie Parker and Coltrane being like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin - being #1 and #2.

We talked about about how small steps were needed to make giant leaps. And just six months ago, I visited NASA and stepped into Neil's footprint after watching an amazing film about the moon landing and hearing him talk to kids about the future. Guess I've been a huge fan since 1969. Yes, am old enough to remember the actual moon landing and spent much of my childhood assembling Apollo rocket models with my brother.

He was so nuts about Apollo 11, had a birthday cake shaped like a rocket! Bye bye Neil. We will never outgrow you.

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I'm pretty much a nut about si-fi and space travel.I remember watching the entire Apollo 11 mission on my little 12" black and white TV.Those first,as well as all astronauts,were people of great courage and conviction.Neil was an engineer.A self admitted geek,with a pocket protector, who had the balls to pilot a craft and land it on another world.A mission that if anything went wrong,he and his crew would not return from,and using a computer that had way less memory,and processing speed than your cell phone..

Thats what a true hero looks like boys and girls.RIP

Steve B
 
Neil has moved on and we are the ones who lose. You cannot destroy energy, you can only transform it. That's a fact of the physical world, I'm not just making that up. Nature is too conservative to let rest a soul like Neil's. I don't believe that he's resting anywhere, his journey just started a new chapter. He is a positive force in the universe. I liked that he did a lot and was modest about it. A man of class and distinction. He knew his stuff too. Even though he is not physically here anymore, he can influence people well after his time, and that is a great thing for people.

The story behind the Apollo 11 moon landing is just incredible. Missing the original landing site because of computer overload and crash, (they did this mission with the computing power of a pocket calculator basically speaking) flying by his own wits and landing the craft, don't forget he's on the friggin moon for Pete's sake, with only 11 seconds (or close to it) of fuel remaining. I mean literally land the craft or die. Buzz was like, "land the craft Neil, land the craft..." Neil kept his cool right up to the end and pulled it off. When he stepped out onto the moon for the first time and uttered those famous words, you had no idea this guy literally just cheated death. You got the impression that everything went as planned, which it definitely did not. Incredible composure, legendary. Then there was the incident where someone accidentally broke off the push in handle, that closes the circuit breaker, to blast off outta there. They had to do an "on the fly" workaround using a Bic pen cap to hold the damn thing shut so the electrical would engage. Unbelievable. Then there was the report of the strange greenish illuminated orb observing them from a few hundred miles out, for quite some time....Just incredible stuff, legendary. Modern day Christopher Columbus/Magellan/Lewis and Clark type guy.
 
Beautifully penned guys. I have nothing to add, other than I've always regarded him as the greatest modern American. I watched the moon landing with our entire school sat in rows crossed legged in the hall. I could hardly see the tiny TV, but that didn't really matter, as even at age 9, I knew I was witnessing something special. Even the chance of glimpsing Estelle Parry's inner thigh didn't un-fixate my gaze from that flickering image.

RIP Neil.
 
To Gvd - Thank you for posting this. I had a chance to see the Columbia launch when I was performing on Carnival Cruise Lines based out of Canaveral. Later, in my room on the ship I watched the news as the reports came in of the disaster. It makes you realize how much those astronauts risked for the sake of their career, county, and science. Neil Armstrong also knew the risks and bravely took them on. What more can be said?

Jeff
 
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