Everyone old enough to have witnessed on television the moon landing on July 20, 1969, will never forget it. The next day the New York Times used, I believe for the first time, war type to announce the news. It has used that size type only a few times since (Nixon’s resignation, Clinton’s impeachment, 9/11).
I was 25 that year and watched the landing with my grandfather, who was then 87. Ever the historian, I was deeply aware of the changes he had seen in his lifetime. Born in 1881 into a world of gas light and horses, a world without movies or even amateur still photography, without telephones or phonographs (although both had been invented), it was a world where Chester Arthur was president and Queen Victoria’s reign had twenty years to run. Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon had been published only 16 years earlier and its astronauts had used a giant cannon to get to the moon (the g forces would have killed them instantly on take off). The back of the moon was the very epitome of the unknowable.
My grandfather had been 21 when the Wright Brothers first flew (although he wouldn’t have known it as it wasn’t reported in the papers), 45 when Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic. He was 65 when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, 76 when Sputnik was launched. Now he was sitting in front of a color television (an inconceivable technology in 1881) watching a man climb down a ladder and set foot on the moon, a quarter of a million miles away.
Naturally I wondered what milestones I would have seen by the time I was 87. I’m not there yet, but Voyager, launched in 1976, has now reached the heliopause, the outermost edge of the solar system. Probes have visited every planet and another will reach Pluto (demoted from planethood a few years ago) in 2015. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter—mere dots of light in a telescope when I was growing up—have been observed up close and Titan, Saturn’s big moon, has been landed on, revealing lakes of liquid methane and a thousand other wonders. Rovers are crisscrossing the surface of Mars, allowing us to be tourists on a planet that many serious people thought inhabited when my grandfather was growing up. The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed astonishing sights and the James Webb Telescope will reveal many more after it is launched.
The gods are very fickle in how they hand out historical immortality. The other eleven men who walked on the moon are just as brave, just as competent, as Neil Armstrong. But because he was the first, he will ever be the personification of this great era in human exploration we have lived through, one of the iconic Americans of the 20th century.
Neil Armstrong is the symbol of the success of the vision of JFK who launched the U.S. into a race for space and ensured our nation would lead the world in space exploration and technology. Its very sad that Neil Armstrong's death now symbolizes the fact that another democratic President, Barack Obama, has killed the U.S. manned space program and left America lagging behind, and begging the Russians to allow us to purchase space to hitch a ride with them anytime we want to send a man into space. Obama found nearly $100 billion dollars to waste on Green Corruption, wasting over 1/2 billion dollars on Solyndra alone, but he's gutted the budget for NASA. It seems no campaign contributors are interested in NASA. Its a sad commentary that as the the symbol of success of JFKs vision passes onward, our current visionless President passes on JFKs vision to the Chinese and Russians to fulfill, and forfeits American Leadership in space. Neil Armstrong, God Bless and God Speed!!!!
We had such promise. Pity it's come to this.
But we have diverrrrsity! Isn't that the important thing?
King George III said that George Washington was the "Greatest Man in the World" for willingly giving up his position and status as President of the US when his second term expired. America must have a supply of these "Great Men". Neil Armstrong is an astonishing example of such greatness. Yes, he was propelled to his notoriety by the efforts of giants; and he stood upon their collective shoulders. But when his job was finished, he quietly retired; and was rarely heard from again. He was the most famous person on the planet for some time, and he took no advantage what so ever of that fact. Contrast that with the litany of blowhards that we are assaulted with daily now. God Speed Neil, we have always been, and always will be forever proud of you and those who flew with you.
I wonder how many of the under 30 crowd even know who Neil Armstrong was? ( Did he dated a Kardashian?) Or that America was once truly great and the envy of the world.
Take care Mr. Armstrong, you will be truly missed. RIP Sir…