Neil Armstrong dead

LooseCannon

LooseCannon

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Neil Armstrong has died at the age of 82 after complications from heart surgery.

I am very sad.
 
Few people have more embodied the dream of space and the vast potential of humanity. We have lost a hero, not only to one particular country, but to the whole of humanity.
 
This man was on the moon. I still can't quite grasp that. They sailed to the fucking moon. He laid his footsteps on another celestial body.
His achievement is epic as Adrian Smith.

I have nothing other than admiration for Armstrong. But I wouldn't call him a hero. He was an astronaut on a mission. All those people working on Apollo project throughout the USA, displaying what can be done when masses of people really unite on something. That's the goal, all other stuff is secondary. So the complete project was fucking heroic, with Armstrong having his share right there.

I'm sure that Armstrong himself wouldn't be happy about media blowing up his "heroism".
We should raise an initiative for burying him on the moon.
 
Well said, Zare.

sideline comment:

What I like is watching old space travel films from the time before the moon was reached. I especially recommend Destination Moon (1950). It's sci-fi in semi-documentary style and the first major science-fiction film produced in the United States to deal realistically with the prospect of space travel. Nineteen years before the actual moon landing, the movie tells about an American businessman financing a lunar expedition before the Russians get there first. The film depicts space walks, space travel, and operations on the lunar surface with a remarkable degree of accuracy.

The makers of the film did a good job and the result helps me trying to imagine the passion and interest Armstrong must have felt as well, when he prepared himself for the flight, and when he went out exploring the unknown.
 
This is definitely a sad day, however in many hundreds of years time when human beings look back they will not be celebrating the lives of those who made the top 100 in the music charts or the so-called celebrities popular for 5 years or so, they will celebrate the lives of modern-day pioneers like this man who has truly contributed to advancing the human race. Neil Armstrong is one of the few people who's legacy will be remembered throughout all of time.

 
Zare said:
But I wouldn't call him a hero. He was an astronaut on a mission. All those people working on Apollo project throughout the USA, displaying what can be done when masses of people really unite on something. That's the goal, all other stuff is secondary. So the complete project was fucking heroic, with Armstrong having his share right there.
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I agree that the entire project was heroic. However, there is a difference between those people who develop the technology, those who use it and those who actually put their lives in its hands. Picture this: The Apollo 11 crew accepted the mission sometime in late 1968, if I am not mistaken. At that time, the launching of Sputnik 1 was only 11 years back. Gagarin had been in space only seven years ago (and I would agree that he was the greater hero - but this thread is not about him). The Apollo 1 disaster happened the year before. By all means, these men were venturing into the unknown and risking their lives. They were sitting on top of a 110.6 m, 2,800,000 kg rocket with ca. 100,000 liters of fuel - we've grown so accustomed to this picture that we sometimes lose perspective of what this really means. These guys sat on a rocket that threw them into space. Would you sit down on top of a rocket? Sure, the thing was tested and controlled as far as possible, but the margin of error was still potentially fatal. The thing could have missed its targets due to a tiny calculation error and thrown them into deep space with no chance of recovery. Or it could simply have blown up. Then consider this: Once they were in space, if anything would have gone wrong, nobody would have gotten them back. Sure, Apollo 13 later proved that recovery was not impossible, but not only was that after Apollo 11, but it was also nothing that could be taken into account. Once you're out there, you're out there and you have to pray that everything works. No decade-long routine as with the latter years Space Shuttle program either. The flight to the moon had been accomplished before, but not the landing. What if something went wrong there? The following thought is courtesy of Albie: It's not like you're on the Mount Everest or the in Arctic. If you get lost there, and someone is monitoring you, they will have a chance of recovering you. It may be difficult, very difficult indeed, but possible. With the moon? No chance.
The way NASA made it look, with it being a controlled operation on the cutting edge of technology (again here, in relative terms, a new car gets more testing before it is thrown on the market than the lunar landing operation had in its entirety. In modern terms, the Apollo 11 crew were the beta-testers of the entire operation), only concealed the fact that this was an adventure with uncertain outcome - something that must have been on the Astronaut's minds.

If you are crazy enough to face all these outlooks and still go - that qualifies you as a hero. Finally, Neil Armstrong had that little token of luck of getting to be the first to step out.

Finally, I just want to put this out: Even if we never returned to the moon, which would be a tragic insult to everything humanity has achieved in its history... even if we burned all mankind in a nuclear holocaust... even if the sun stopped shining and the earth stopped turning, all the satellite junk we've put into orbit in the recent decades vaporized, and all material achievement of humanity vanished... as long as the moon is still there, the traces the astronauts left there will remain. What these few Apollo astronauts did was leave a monument to mankind that will remain there for all times.
 
I was just watching the ordinary evening news when this was announced in a bottom-line ticker. A sad day, really. The Apollo astronauts belong to that group of people who have achieved something really special. When I started to pay attention to the world around me, space travel was becoming routine. In the 50s and 60s, each mission was a new step into partially unknown territory. Both Gagarin's flight and every Apollo flight were landmarks for humanity, with the moon landing as a climax.

Armstrong and Aldrin, as the first two men to set foot on another world, will have a place in history as long as the human race continues to exist. Armstrong's continued work as an activist for further manned missions into space serves him credit as well.

RIP.
 
Perun, I agree with everything you said, but we have a different view on the term "hero".

A hero is a person who performs extraordinary deeds for the benefit of others.
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Very loose term. However, all astronauts are trained for catastrophic situations. Psychologically trained. They have capability to remain calm and light-headed even if spacecraft's on fire.
When ordinary citizen saves life of unknown person, he becomes a hero. Because he's been put into extraordinary situation, for him. When policeman, or fireman, or doctor saves somebody's life, he did the job he was trained for.

Apollo 11 crew was not in extraordinary situation, because everything went as planned, and their training was based on those plans.

In any case, I won't nitpick any more about definition of this term, just wanted to point out some things.
 
Perhaps the greatest thing about Armstrong is that he never, ever tried to capitalize on his achievement. Imagine the millions of dollars in endorsement deals that he could've earned yet he refused. In these days of American Idol, the Kardashian skanks, and people basically selling their souls to be famous that is so refreshing and unfortunately rare. R.I.P.
 
maidenn.c.indiana said:
Perhaps the greatest thing about Armstrong is that he never, ever tried to capitalize on his achievement. Imagine the millions of dollars in endorsement deals that he could've earned yet he refused. In these days of American Idol, the Kardashian skanks, and people basically selling their souls to be famous that is so refreshing and unfortunately rare. R.I.P.
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I was going to post something similar to this, it is amazing that someone who completed one of the greatest achievements in human history stayed so humble.

I would throw in a recommendation for the excellent HBO miniseries From The Earth to the Moon, the best (IMO) TV show or movie about the US Space Program.
 
Very sad. Heroic is a term that gets used a lot - perhaps what he did was. At the very least it was courageous.
 
What the hell is Zare talking about?? "Not an extraordinary situation"?? Obviously a hero, incredibly brave, incredibly smart, a national treasure. There have been a handful of true American heroes in the last century, but he was one of them. Plus, things didn't go according to plan, see the video about the pen story that Foro posted -- an ingenious solution to a potentially fatal problem.
 
A hero,100% sure. I can imagine back in 1969 they think they were prepare but with the perspective of time,i think many of us would think " how did they make it?" and they did it ,risking his lives.
 
The speech that was prepared in the event they module could not get off the moon, which was considered the biggest risk

As Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon on July 21, 1969, his immortal words "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" became synonymous with the scale of the achievement.

However, in the event that astronauts Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin been stranded on the Moon, Nixon would have delivered a far more chilling address to the nation.

After calling their widows, he would have told the watching millions: "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.

"These brave men know there is no hope for their recovery but they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

"These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

"They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

"In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man."

The words are contained in a typed document entitled "In the event of Moon disaster" which was consigned to an archive until now – almost 40 years since the historic mission.

It is dated July 18, 1969 – two days before the landing was due – and was prepared by Nixon's speech writer, Bill Safire, and sent to White House chief of staff Harry Haldeman.

However, following the success of the mission, it was laid aside in Nixon's private papers in America's national archives.

It reveals that Nixon would have added: "In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations.
"In modern times, we do much the same but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied but these men were the first and they will remain the foremost in our hearts."

In an allusion to Rupert Brooke's First World War poem The Soldier, his concluding lines were to be: "For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."
Once the speech had been delivered, Mission Control would have closed communications and a clergyman would have conducted a burial service
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