Obituaries--Neil Armstrong

One of the most important explorers, you might say, in human history has died today:



Neil Armstrong was 82 years old. He had suffered from some cardiovascular problems:

Twelve years after the Soviet Sputnik satellite reached space first, deeply alarming U.S. officials, and after President John F. Kennedy in 1961 declared it a national priority to land an American on the moon “before this decade is out,” Mr. Armstrong, a former Navy fighter pilot, commanded the NASA crew that finished the job.

His trip to the moon — particularly the hair-raising final descent from lunar orbit to the treacherous surface — was history’s boldest feat of aviation. Yet what the experience meant to him, what he thought of it all on an emotional level, he mostly kept to himself.

Like his boyhood idol, transatlantic aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, Mr. Armstrong learned how uncomfortable the intrusion of global acclaim can be. And just as Lindbergh had done, he eventually shied from the public and avoided the popular media.

I was fourteen in 1969, and I, like millions of people, saw the moon landing live on television.

By the way, almost all of the photos taken of the first moon landing were taken by Neil Armstrong, which is why very few pictures of him during the moon landing exist.