Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies

CINCINNATI (AP) — Neil
Armstrong was a quiet self-
described nerdy engineer who
became a global hero when as
a steely-nerved pilot he made
"one giant leap for mankind" with a small step on to the
moon. The modest man who
had people on Earth
entranced and awed from
almost a quarter million miles
away has died. He was 82. Armstrong died following
complications resulting from
cardiovascular procedures, a
statement Saturday from his
family said. It didn't say
where he died. 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 setting 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 (a)
man, one giant leap for
mankind," Armstrong said. In those first few moments on
the moon, during the climax of
heated space race with the
then-Soviet Union, Armstrong
stopped in what he called "a
tender moment" and left a patch 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," Armstrong told an
Australian television
interviewer this year. Armstrong and 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,"
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, Armstrong never
allowed himself to be caught
up in the celebrity and glamor of the space program. "I am, and ever will be, a
white socks, pocket protector,
nerdy engineer," he said in
February 2000 in one of his
rare public appearances.
"And I take a substantial amount of pride in the
accomplishments of my
profession." A man who kept away from
cameras, 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 emphasized private
companies developing
spaceships. He testified before
Congress and in an email to
The Associated Press, 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." 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 former
astronaut and Sen. John
Glenn to lay wreaths on the
graves of Wilbur and Orville
Wright. Glenn introduced
Armstrong and noted it was 34 years to the day that
Armstrong had walked on the
moon. "Thank you, John. Thirty-four
years?" Armstrong quipped,
as if he hadn't given it a
thought. At another joint appearance,
the two embraced and Glenn
commented: "To this day, he's
the one person on Earth, I'm
truly, truly envious of." 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,
Armstrong retreated to the
quiet of the classroom and his
southwest Ohio farm. Aldrin
said in his book "Men from
Earth" that Armstrong was one of the quietest, most
private men he had ever met. In the Australian interview,
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, Armstrong
again was low-key, telling a
gathering that the space race
was "the ultimate peaceful
competition: USA versus U.S.S.R. It did allow both sides
to take the high road with the
objectives of science and
learning and exploration." Glenn, who went through
jungle training in Panama
with 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." Derek Elliott, curator of the
Smithsonian Institution's U.S.
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 U.S. pre- eminence in science and
technology, 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 Kennedy had set in
May 1961, shortly after 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 U.S. 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," 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,"
Armstrong radioed after the
spacecraft settled onto the moon. "The Eagle has
landed." "Roger, Tranquility," the
Houston staffer radioed back.
"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, Michael Collins,
circled the moon in the mother
ship Columbia 60 miles
overhead while Armstrong
and Aldrin went to the moon's surface. In all, 12 American astronauts
walked on the moon between
1969 and the last moon
mission in 1972. For Americans, reaching the
moon provided uplift and
respite from the Vietnam
War, from strife in the Middle
East, from the startling news
just a few days earlier that a young woman had drowned in
a car driven off a wooden
bridge on Chappaquiddick
Island by Sen. Edward
Kennedy. The landing
occurred as organizers were gearing up for Woodstock, the
legendary three-day rock
festival on a farm in the
Catskills of New York. Armstrong was born Aug. 5,
1930, on a farm near
Wapakoneta in western Ohio.
He took his first airplane ride
at age 6 and developed a
fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model
airplanes and conduct
experiments in a homemade
wind tunnel. As a boy, he worked at a
pharmacy and took flying
lessons. He was licensed to fly
at 16, before he got his
driver's license. Armstrong enrolled in Purdue
University to study
aeronautical engineering but
was called to duty with the
U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78
combat missions in Korea. After the war, Armstrong
finished his degree from
Purdue and later earned a
master's degree in aerospace
engineering from the
University of Southern California. He became a test
pilot with what evolved into
the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, flying
more than 200 kinds of
aircraft from gliders to jets. Armstrong was accepted into
NASA's second astronaut class
in 1962 — the first, including
Glenn, was chosen in 1959 —
and commanded the Gemini 8
mission in 1966. After the first space docking, he
brought the capsule back in an
emergency landing in the
Pacific Ocean when a wildly
firing thruster kicked it out of
orbit. Armstrong was backup
commander for the historic
Apollo 8 mission at
Christmastime in 1968. In that
flight, Commander Frank
Borman, and Jim Lovell and Bill Anders circled the moon
10 times, and paving the way
for the lunar landing seven
months later. Aldrin said he and Armstrong
were not prone to free
exchanges of sentiment. "But there was that moment
on the moon, a brief moment,
in which we sort of looked at
each other and slapped each
other on the shoulder ... and
said, 'We made it. Good show,' or something like that,"
Aldrin said. An estimated 600 million
people — a fifth of the
world's population — watched
and listened to the landing,
the largest audience for any
single event in history. Parents huddled with their
children in front of the family
television, mesmerized by
what they were witnessing.
Farmers abandoned their
nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the
highway and checked into
motels just to see the
moonwalk. Television-less campers in
California ran to their cars to
catch the word on the radio.
Boy Scouts at a camp in
Michigan watched on a
generator-powered television supplied by a parent. Afterward, people walked out
of their homes and gazed at
the moon, in awe of what they
had just seen. Others peeked
through telescopes in hopes of
spotting the astronauts. In Wapakoneta, media and
souvenir frenzy was swirling
around the home of
Armstrong's parents. "You couldn't see the house
for the news media," recalled
John Zwez, former manager
of the Neil Armstrong Air and
Space Museum. "People were
pulling grass out of their front yard." Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins
were given ticker tape
parades in New York, Chicago
and Los Angeles and later
made a 22-nation world tour.
A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city
of 9,000. In 1970, Armstrong was
appointed deputy associate
administrator for aeronautics
at NASA but left the following
year to teach aerospace
engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He remained there until 1979
and during that time bought a
310-acre farm near Lebanon,
where he raised cattle and
corn. He stayed out of public
view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches. "He didn't give interviews, but
he wasn't a strange person or
hard to talk to," said Ron
Huston, a colleague at the
University of Cincinnati. "He
just didn't like being a novelty." Those who knew him said he
enjoyed golfing with friends,
was active in the local YMCA
and frequently ate lunch at
the same restaurant in
Lebanon. In 2000, when he agreed to
announce the top 20
engineering achievements of
the 20th century as voted by
the National Academy of
Engineering, Armstrong said there was one disappointment
relating to his moonwalk. "I can honestly say — and it's
a big surprise to me — that I
have never had a dream
about being on the moon," he
said. From 1982 to 1992,
Armstrong was chairman of
Charlottesville, Va.-based
Computing Technologies for
Aviation Inc., a company that
supplies computer information management systems for
business aircraft. He then became chairman of
AIL Systems Inc., an electronic
systems company in Deer
Park, N.Y. Armstrong married Carol
Knight in 1999, and the couple
lived in Indian Hill, a
Cincinnati suburb. He had two
adult sons from a previous
marriage. At the Griffith Observatory in
Los Angeles on Saturday,
visitors held a minute of
silence in memory of
Armstrong.