Neil Armstrong

• 1. Introduction

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  Neil Armstrong set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC on the 21st of July 1969, and said seven words that an estimated 530 million people heard live: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Those 530 million represented roughly 20 percent of the entire world's population at the time. The moment was broadcast live via the BBC and Voice of America and carried by stations around the globe. Yet the man who spoke those words spent the rest of his life quietly deflecting the fame they brought him. He retreated to a dairy farm in Ohio, taught undergraduate engineering classes, and turned down nearly every request for an interview. How does a child from rural Ohio become the first human being to stand on another world? And what does a person do after that?

• 2. Ohio Roots

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  Armstrong was born in rural Washington Township, in Auglaize County, Ohio, on the 5th of August 1930, the son of Viola Louise Engel and Stephen Koenig Armstrong. His father was an auditor for the Ohio state government, and the family moved constantly, living in 16 towns across the state over 14 years. The restlessness of that childhood did not unsettle Armstrong. It gave him something to chase. His love for flying began at age two, when his father took him to the Cleveland Air Races. At five or six, he flew for the first time in a Ford Trimotor, the plane known as the "Tin Goose," during a ride with his father in Warren, Ohio. He began building and flying model aircraft as a young boy. By the time the family settled permanently in Wapakoneta in 1944, Armstrong was already taking lessons at the local airfield. He earned his student flight certificate on his 16th birthday, then soloed that August, before he had ever held a driver's license. He was also an active Boy Scout and eventually earned the rank of Eagle Scout, an achievement he took seriously enough that for years he wrote personal letters to newly minted Eagle Scouts across the country. At age 17, in 1947, Armstrong enrolled at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, becoming the second person in his family to attend college. His tuition was covered under the Holloway Plan, a Navy arrangement that required him to complete two years of study, two years of flight training, one year of naval service, and then return to finish his degree.

• 3. Combat and Flight School

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  Armstrong's call-up from the Navy arrived on the 26th of January 1949, ordering him to report to Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida for flight training with class 5-49. He became a midshipman on the 24th of February 1949, and made his first carrier landing on the 2nd of March 1950, an achievement he considered comparable to his first solo flight. On the 16th of August 1950, he was informed by letter that he was a fully qualified naval aviator. By November of that year he had joined VF-51, an all-jet squadron, becoming its youngest officer. He flew his first jet, a Grumman F9F Panther, on the 5th of January 1951. When VF-51 shipped out for Korea aboard the Essex in June 1951, Armstrong flew armed reconnaissance and escort missions over enemy territory. On the 3rd of September 1951, flying over the area west of Wonsan, his F9F Panther was damaged when 6 feet of wing was torn off after colliding with a cable strung across the hills as a booby trap. He flew the damaged aircraft back to friendly territory, but the loss of the aileron made ejection the only safe option. His parachute was blown back over land. A jeep driven by a roommate from flight school picked him up. In all, he flew 78 combat missions over Korea for a total of 121 hours in the air. He received the Air Medal for 20 combat missions and two gold stars for the next 40. Armstrong's regular Navy commission ended on the 25th of February 1952, and he returned to Purdue as a reservist to finish his bachelor's degree.

• 4. Test Pilot Years

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  Armstrong reported for his first test flight at the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland on the 1st of March 1955, and transferred to the High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California that July. His first day included piloting chase planes during drops of experimental aircraft from modified bombers. On the 22nd of March 1956, he was in a Boeing B-29 Superfortress preparing to air-drop a Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket at 30,000 feet when the number-four engine propeller began windmilling and then disintegrated at the moment of launch. Pieces damaged two other engines. Armstrong and pilot Stan Butchart made a slow, circling descent using only a single engine and landed safely. Armstrong served as project pilot on Century Series fighters including the North American F-100 Super Sabre, the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the Republic F-105 Thunderchief, and the Convair F-106 Delta Dart. He flew the North American X-15 seven times, reaching a top speed of Mach 5.74, which works out to 3,989 miles per hour. On his sixth X-15 flight on the 20th of April 1962, he climbed to over 207,000 feet, the highest he would fly until his Gemini mission, and then accidentally flew 40 miles past the landing field at Mach 3 before circling back. Fellow astronaut Michael Collins later wrote that among the X-15 pilots, Armstrong had been considered "one of the weaker stick-and-rudder men, but the very best when it came to understanding the machine's design and how it operated." Test pilot Milt Thompson said he was "the most technically capable of the early X-15 pilots." By the time he left the Flight Research Center, Armstrong had accumulated 2,400 flying hours and had flown more than 200 different models of aircraft.

• 5. From Gemini to Apollo

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  Armstrong applied to join the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962, but his paperwork arrived roughly a week past the June 1 deadline. Dick Day, a flight simulator expert who had worked with Armstrong at Edwards, spotted the late application and quietly slipped it into the pile. NASA Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton called Armstrong on the 13th of September 1962 and asked whether he would join what the press called "the New Nine." Armstrong said yes without hesitation. His first spaceflight, as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966, achieved the first-ever docking of two spacecraft. The mission nearly ended in disaster when a stuck thruster sent the docked vehicles into a violent roll, reaching about once per revolution per second. Armstrong used the Reentry Control System to stabilize the spacecraft, which by mission rules forced an immediate return to Earth. Some in the Astronaut Office felt Armstrong and his pilot David Scott "had botched their first mission," but flight director Gene Kranz later wrote, "The crew reacted as they were trained, and they reacted wrong because we trained them wrong." During training for Apollo 11, on the 6th of May 1968, Armstrong was 100 feet above the ground in a Lunar Landing Research Vehicle when its controls began to fail and the craft started rolling. He ejected moments before it struck the ground and burst into flames. Later analysis suggested that half a second more and his parachute would not have opened in time. His only injury was a bitten tongue. Slayton offered Armstrong command of Apollo 11 on the 23rd of December 1968, as Apollo 8 was orbiting the Moon. Armstrong was also offered the chance to replace Buzz Aldrin with Jim Lovell on the crew, but after thinking it over for a day, he chose to keep Aldrin, saying he had no difficulty working with him and felt Lovell deserved his own command.

• 6. On the Moon

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  A Saturn V rocket lifted Apollo 11 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on the 16th of July 1969, at 13:32:00 UTC. Armstrong's heart rate peaked at 110 beats per minute during the launch. Three minutes into the final descent, he noticed that craters were passing roughly two seconds too early, meaning the Lunar Module Eagle would land several miles beyond the planned zone. Then a series of computer alarms sounded, beginning with a code 1202 error that neither Armstrong nor Aldrin could immediately identify. Word came from CAPCOM Charles Duke in Houston that the alarms were caused by executive overflows in the guidance computer and were not a concern. When Armstrong saw the Eagle was heading toward unsafe terrain, he took manual control and searched for a better spot, burning more fuel than any simulation had required. At touchdown, Aldrin and Armstrong estimated they had 40 seconds of fuel left, including 20 seconds reserved for an abort. Post-mission analysis put the actual remaining burn time at 45 to 50 seconds. The landing occurred several seconds after 20:17:40 UTC on the 20th of July 1969. Armstrong confirmed it to Mission Control with the words, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." About 19 minutes after Armstrong stepped onto the surface, Aldrin joined him. The two spent two and a half hours outside the module. Armstrong unveiled a commemorative plaque, planted the United States flag, and took a brief walk to what is now called East Crater, 65 yards east of the lander, the greatest distance traveled from the module during the entire mission. President Nixon spoke to them by telephone for about a minute. During the mission, Armstrong's final task before leaving the surface was to remind Aldrin to leave a small package of memorial items honoring Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, as well as the Apollo 1 crew of Grissom, White, and Chaffee.

• 7. After the Moon

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  Armstrong resigned from NASA in 1971 and accepted a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, choosing Cincinnati over other schools, including his own Purdue, because it had a small aerospace department and he worried about seeming to expect preferential treatment with only a master's degree from USC. He created two graduate-level courses there: aircraft design and experimental flight mechanics. He was considered a good teacher and a tough grader. His research deliberately avoided his NASA work to prevent any appearance of favoritism. He resigned from the university in 1980 after the school converted from an independent municipal institution to a state school, increasing its bureaucracy. In 1979, less than 10 percent of his income came from his university salary. Beyond teaching, Armstrong served on the investigation into the Apollo 13 explosion and determined that a 28-volt thermostat switch, which should have been replaced with a 65-volt version, caused the failure. He also served as vice chairman of the Rogers Commission investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, where he used personal contacts developed over decades to help identify the cause. In business, he became a spokesman for Chrysler beginning in January 1979, served on the board of United Airlines starting in 1978, and chaired the board of AIL Systems through its merger with EDO Corporation in 2000. Armstrong guarded his name and likeness carefully. When Hallmark Cards used a recording of his "one small step" quote in a Christmas ornament in 1994 without permission, he sued, and the settlement was donated to Purdue. His health declined in his final years. On the 7th of August 2012, he underwent bypass surgery at Mercy Health Fairfield Hospital in Fairfield, Ohio. Complications developed and he died on the 25th of August 2012, at age 82. A tribute was held on the 13th of September at Washington National Cathedral, whose Space Window holds a sliver of Moon rock in its stained-glass panels. Buzz Aldrin called Armstrong "the best pilot I ever knew," and Gene Cernan recalled his fuel-low approach to the Moon: "When the gauge says empty, we all know there's a gallon or two left in the tank."