Neil Armstrong, First Man on Moon, Dies at 82

[Conor Dary]

What a great moment that was back in July 1969. I remember going outside, after watching the landing on tv, to look at the moon and realizing there were actually people there.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/scien ... on.html?hp

[jeremyp]

Quite a shock! Complications from a by pass. I knew someone who died after by pass. I always remember that grainy TV feed from the moon. He never capitalized on his fame. Just think his footprints may be on the moon for millenia.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... hs/260125/

[lapsus]

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have always seemed to me like giants from an earlier time, and now one of them is gone. During my lifetime, no one has walked on the moon. This is somehow depressing.

[kuha]

The end of a certain historical era, for sure. I was riveted to the tube at the time and watched all of it. Amazing that 1969 is now 43 yrs ago...

[bad hammy]

Yep, the years are passing by. Was definitely watching the tube and then looking up to the moon. Armstrong filled the quiet hero role well.

[Pego]

The end of a certain historical era, for sure. I was riveted to the tube at the time and watched all of it. Amazing that 1969 is now 43 yrs ago...

We watched it in the friend's house in Columbus, OH. Like it was yesterday.

[odelltrclan]

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have always seemed to me like giants from an earlier time, and now one of them is gone. During my lifetime, no one has walked on the moon. This is somehow depressing.

Shouldn't be depressing at all. He had his time, lived a full and fruitful life and had one of the most memorable moments in the history of mankind. A day to reflect on the greatness he achieved.

I remember watching the moment on the tube, but was only 5 years old so didn't get the magnitude of what was going on at the time.

[Conor Dary]

During my lifetime, no one has walked on the moon. This is somehow depressing.

I suspect this is what he is talking about. And I sympathize. The space shuttle was something that went 200 miles in space, and really didn't do a whole lot except blow up a couple of times.

The moon landing was pretty exciting, riveting stuff.

[Marlow]

The moment he stepped onto the lunar surface is one of those "I remember exactly where I was then" times in our lives (Kennedy's shooting, 9/11). I was 18, had JUST that evening returned home from 6 weeks in Germany and was RACING to get home to see it live on TV with Walter Cronkite. I hope he fully understood what he gave us all that night.

[jhc68]

When Apollo 11 lifted off from Canaveral I was in a village in remote northeastern Thailand. It was pretty late at night there but everyone was up and watching TV on the green in the middle of the hamlet. The US Information Agency had sent a fleet of flatbed trucks out across the area and they were equipped with electrical generators, three TVs wired together and set on the truck bed and one big dish antennae. I'm not sure whether they were catching a TV signal from satellite (seems a little early for such technology?) or whether they had some sort of local network the dishes were tuning in, but the result was a poor black and white image that was still a sensation in that village.

Most of the locals had limited experience with TV so just watching anything was noteworthy. But the rocket launch was something else again. An old farmer standing in the crowd next to me asked what he was seeing. I had enough language to tell him the basics: three Americans were on their way to the Moon, where a couple of them would actually land and walk around for a while. He didn't seem to be grasping the concept very clearly so I took to drawing some diagrams in the red-dirt at our feet and pointing up to the sky to a pretty big, bright moon overhead.

After a while the old guy apparently got the gist of what I was saying and repeated the story back to me slowly, emphasizing each point so I would understand. I would gesture and speak affirmatives at each juncture. After he was done making sure he'd understood what I told him, the farmer gave me a huge smile, a bit of a laugh and let me know in no-uncertain-terms that he regarded what I had said as the biggest load of crap he had ever heard!

[cullman]

DOGPILE!! According to NBC's website..."Astronaut Neil Young (sic), first man to walk on moon, dies at age 82."
http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2012/08/n ... young.html

[kuha]

DOGPILE!! According to NBC's website..."Astronaut Neil Young (sic), first man to walk on moon, dies at age 82."
http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2012/08/n ... young.html

Pretty hilarious! Neil Young is actually WAY older than 82!!

[Bruce Kritzler]

We watched it in the friend's house in Columbus, OH. Like it was yesterday.

You were pretty close to Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta.

[KDFINE]

When it happened, I would have bet that we'd be on Mars by now.

[jhc68]

Well, as Neil Armstrong once described the Apollo 11 voayge:

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.
Leave us

Helpless, helpless, helpless

[cullman]

I'm a big fan of the manned space flights but it was on a Sunday and I was waiting for the taped delayed telecast of Day 2 of the US - USSR Track meet.

[guru]

When viewing the descent of Curiosity to Mars in HD, it boggles the mind what a trip to the moon would look like today compared to those grainy transmissions from the Apollo era

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZX5GRPn ... r_embedded

[jeremyp]

I'm a big fan of the manned space flights but it was on a Sunday and I was waiting for the taped delayed telecast of Day 2 of the US - USSR Track meet.

Now that's what I call a Track and Field FAN!

[Halfmiler2]

During my lifetime, no one has walked on the moon. This is somehow depressing.

I suspect this is what he is talking about. And I sympathize. The space shuttle was something that went 200 miles in space, and really didn't do a whole lot except blow up a couple of times.

The moon landing was pretty exciting, riveting stuff.

The ironic thing is that we have a greater capability to go to Mars now then we did to go to the Moon in 1969. The equipment back then was primitive by today's standards. Even pocket calculators had not been invented and scientists still used slide rules. Computers took up a whole room instead of being desk-tops or laptops and had limited capacity by today's standards. The space travelers of that era were truly heoric.

R.I.P. Neil Armstrong. It is indeed hard to believe iit was 43 years ago.

[18.99s]

The ironic thing is that we have a greater capability to go to Mars now then we did to go to the Moon in 1969.

That's true for going there, but bringing a human back alive from Mars is a whole 'nother universe of difficulty. Sending a ship that has enough power and fuel remaining to break Mars's gravity (which is over twice that of the moon) while carrying enough supplies to last the multi-month return trip presents difficulties way beyond moon travel. I expect another country will send somebody on a one-way trip to Mars long before the US makes a successful return trip.

[lapsus]

During my lifetime, no one has walked on the moon. This is somehow depressing.

I suspect this is what he is talking about. And I sympathize. The space shuttle was something that went 200 miles in space, and really didn't do a whole lot except blow up a couple of times.

The moon landing was pretty exciting, riveting stuff.

Exactly, you said it better than I.

I do appreciate the difficulty involved in creating the space shuttle, it is more advanced technology than that used for the moon landings. I'm sure it is somewhat of an illusion, but after the Apollo program and early space shuttle years, much of the NASA space technology seemed to stop progressing, or even regress from its mid-70s levels.

What if, what if... say, money spent on SDI from the early 80s on had gone towards the next generation of Mars missions, like the ones that only happened now in the past 10 years? What if the Challenger accident had been avoided, and it had been politically possible for NASA to create something wholly new, instead of having to concentrate on and spend huge sums of money for 20 years to try and make do with old technology, while making sure it remained as safe as humanly possible? Where would we be now, where could we be now?

[Dutra5]

That's true for going there, but bringing a human back alive from Mars is a whole 'nother universe of difficulty.

If we can capture him it won't be!

[lonewolf]

The pics are great,the marvelous instruments will gather reams of imformation and we will no doubt develop things/equipment/etc. in the process of sending Rover to Mars but I return to my dilema.... to what practical end?
Even if it were possible to send humans round trip to Mars... why? They could only observe up close from inside a bubble what Rover is photographing..and the notion of colonizing Mars is even more indefensible.
Interesting pics, though..

[18.99s]

The pics are great,the marvelous instruments will gather reams of imformation and we will no doubt develop things/equipment/etc. in the process of sending Rover to Mars but I return to my dilema.... to what practical end?
Even if it were possible to send humans round trip to Mars... why? They could only observe up close from inside a bubble what Rover is photographing..and the notion of colonizing Mars is even more indefensible.
Interesting pics, though..

Are you serious? If they can roam around with tools and equipment they can do a whole lot more than what a robot Rover can do. Including but not limited to bringing rocks and dirt back inside the spaceship and also back to earth for additional analysis in more detail than the Rover's automated analysis equipment.

[guru]

Read today that Armstrong will be buried at sea, pursuant to his wishes.


The process -

http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/s ... AtSea.aspx