RIP Neil Armstrong
- Thread starter Joseph C.
- Start date
Farfle
100 kW
Very very sad to see one of those great people go. May he rest in peace
grindz145
1 MW
All I know is if you asked me to sign up to go to the moon, and live until I was 82, I'd do it in a heartbeat. He had a pretty incredible life.
The fingers
10 TW
Watched it live at my mom's birthplace, farm in Iowa on b&w TV. I will never forget it. God bless the family, our prayers are with you!
ohzee
100 kW
grindz145 said:
bigmoose
1 MW
I remember that day like yesterday! Snapping B&W pictures of him off the television... He was a good man. Never used his participation in such a historic event for personal gain that I know of. Left NASA and then shared his knowledge of Aerospace with students at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.
dogman dan
1 PW
Yeah, that was huge for us here. All the command module stuff was tested at the NASA site about 4 miles from my current house. Luckily the toxic plume of rocket fuel in the groundwater is not close to the well my water comes from. Apollo meant lots of good jobs in a small town to us. And smart kids in the schools to try to keep up with. Growing up we had real rocket scientists for next door neighbors. The rest of the story of the V1 rocket wasn't part of the grade school history lesson. That neighbor had scary nazi stories to tell the boy scout troop around the campfire. Twice as scary now! We never snapped that he was a real nazi. We just made his kid be the nazi in the army games.
Just bought my new car from Borman, another apollo spaceman. I don't recall if he got to walk on the moon or just stayed in orbit.
The stuff we thought we'd be doing by now, but the cost of it all was just getting a bit high. Had to spend on dumb wars instead,,,,, darn it. Can't wait to go out in the backyard, and watch millionaires go to space on Rutans rocket. Still buying a lotto ticket now and then so I can ride.
Big shoes to fill,,, not just the astronauts either. The guys that built apollo were quite something, and a lot of them gone now.
Just bought my new car from Borman, another apollo spaceman. I don't recall if he got to walk on the moon or just stayed in orbit.
The stuff we thought we'd be doing by now, but the cost of it all was just getting a bit high. Had to spend on dumb wars instead,,,,, darn it. Can't wait to go out in the backyard, and watch millionaires go to space on Rutans rocket. Still buying a lotto ticket now and then so I can ride.
Big shoes to fill,,, not just the astronauts either. The guys that built apollo were quite something, and a lot of them gone now.
I'm told I watched it...but I was less than a year and a half old so I don't remember that. 
I did once get to speak to his cohort, Buzz Aldrin, at a space convention here in Phoenix some years back (though I don't recall what was discussed, as I was not prepared and was rather awestruck and mindbuzzed, probably sounding like an idiot). Never met Armstrong, though.
As a side note:
I was speaking with a coworker about his death today, and a couple of other people nearby (perhaps half my age) said "Who?" in response to his name, and when I repeated it they had never heard of him. When I briefly said he was the first man to land on the moon, one of them said "you mean he just got killed up there? Was it aliens?" and the other said something like "When was taht? I didn't know we ever sent anyone to space".
Really, there's a lot of things I don't expect most people to know...but somehow that we actually did (and still do) go to space, is not one of them.
For the rest of the day, I brought it up with as many people as I had any chance to (perhaps a dozen), of ages from twice my age (44) to a group of four college kids that are probalby only 18-19, and only one person (the oldest) actually knew who NA was and what he had done. Two others didn't know him by name but did remember the moon landings in the early 70s. The rest did not even know we had landed on the moon at all, though a couple of them knew about the ISS and/or shuttle; some didnt' even know we had the ability to go into space "like the guys in starwars" as one person put it.
I did once get to speak to his cohort, Buzz Aldrin, at a space convention here in Phoenix some years back (though I don't recall what was discussed, as I was not prepared and was rather awestruck and mindbuzzed, probably sounding like an idiot). Never met Armstrong, though.
As a side note:
I was speaking with a coworker about his death today, and a couple of other people nearby (perhaps half my age) said "Who?" in response to his name, and when I repeated it they had never heard of him. When I briefly said he was the first man to land on the moon, one of them said "you mean he just got killed up there? Was it aliens?" and the other said something like "When was taht? I didn't know we ever sent anyone to space".
Really, there's a lot of things I don't expect most people to know...but somehow that we actually did (and still do) go to space, is not one of them.
For the rest of the day, I brought it up with as many people as I had any chance to (perhaps a dozen), of ages from twice my age (44) to a group of four college kids that are probalby only 18-19, and only one person (the oldest) actually knew who NA was and what he had done. Two others didn't know him by name but did remember the moon landings in the early 70s. The rest did not even know we had landed on the moon at all, though a couple of them knew about the ISS and/or shuttle; some didnt' even know we had the ability to go into space "like the guys in starwars" as one person put it.
dogman dan
1 PW
That's kind of sad. Bet they know what Bieber had for dinner last night though.
Being about 10 when Niel walked on the moon, it was very exiting to me and all my freinds. Bear in mind, about 75% of them had dad's that were rocket sceintists in my neighborhood. Partly a function of the date it was built, about 1960, the whole block worked at whites sands missile range or physical sceince lab.
So we all had been space mad virtually since birth.
Nevertheless, in one century of countless pioneers of flight, the Wrights, Lindburg, Yeager, and Armstrong are the really huge names you'd think every grade school kid would be taught. Not that aerospace ever changed anybodies life.....
Being about 10 when Niel walked on the moon, it was very exiting to me and all my freinds. Bear in mind, about 75% of them had dad's that were rocket sceintists in my neighborhood. Partly a function of the date it was built, about 1960, the whole block worked at whites sands missile range or physical sceince lab.
So we all had been space mad virtually since birth.
Nevertheless, in one century of countless pioneers of flight, the Wrights, Lindburg, Yeager, and Armstrong are the really huge names you'd think every grade school kid would be taught. Not that aerospace ever changed anybodies life.....
dingoEsride
100 kW
Yes he was a true pioneer of space flight, it was a big event here also in the land of aus, just a strange coincidence that I came across this book about the landing that me and my brothers all received at the time when I was about 9 from my good old grandparents
nechaus
100 kW
It is sad, but what an amazing life he had!
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