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 commemorateNASA 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 aboutPresident
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 forcesNASA 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 aspace 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.
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