Neil Armstrong

American astronaut and aviator

• Born: August 5, 1930
• Birthplace: Wapakoneta, Ohio
• Died: August 25, 2012

Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon. He was commander of the Apollo 11 spacecraft, which made the first piloted lunar landing mission in history, and he had an early career as a test pilot.

Early Life

Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon, was born on August 5, 1930, on a farm in Auglaize County near Wapakoneta, Ohio. He was the elder son of Stephen Armstrong and Viola Armstrong. His younger brother, Dean Alan, was born in Jefferson, Ohio, and had a long career with the Delco Division of General Motors Corporation at Anderson, Indiana; Neil also had a sister, June Louise. Stephen Armstrong was an auditor for the state of Ohio, and his work took the family across the state to many towns. The Armstrongs moved from Warren to Jefferson, to Ravenna, to St. Mary’s, Upper Sandusky, and finally to a more permanent home in Wapakoneta. The Armstrongs were descendants of Scotch-Irish immigrants, while his mother’s ancestors were of German background. Neil Armstrong’s father eventually was made the assistant director of mental hygiene and corrections of the state of Ohio.

Armstrong began his formal education in the public schools of Warren, Ohio, where he attended Champion Heights Elementary School. His advanced reading ability (he had read ninety books in the first grade) permitted him to skip the second grade. Known as a shy and modest boy, he played baseball and football with friends and enjoyed school activities.

Influenced by his father, Armstrong had an early interest in aviation. His family attended the National Air Races at the Cleveland airport, and as a six-year-old boy, he accompanied his father in a plane called a Tin Goose (Ford TriMotor) that provided air rides near their home in Warren. During the Great Depression, Armstrong developed a deep interest in building model airplanes, a hobby that soon filled his room with the smell of glue and balsa wood. He quickly advanced from hobby kits to creating bigger and more powerful models of his own, which he tested at the town park. During his high school years, to improve his homemade planes, Armstrong built a seven-foot-long wind tunnel in the basement of his family’s house. He was also an enthusiastic fan of science fiction, especially the works of H. G. Wells.

One neighbor, Jacob Zint, owned a powerful telescope and often invited youngsters to look at the moon, stars, and planets. Armstrong remembered these stargazing experiences as awe inspiring and began more study of the universe. He loved to learn; his schoolbooks, which his parents saved, reflect his thorough study and wide reading in the fields of science and mathematics. With his collection of the popular Air Trails magazine, he kept pace with aviation advancements. As a high school student, at the age of fifteen, he worked in stores to earn enough money to take flying lessons. On his sixteenth birthday, even before he had a driver’s license, he was granted a student pilot’s license. He later said that he had decided to become an aircraft designer and thought that a good designer needed to know how to fly.

Armstrong rode his bicycle day after day in 1946 to the Auglaize Flying Field at Wapakoneta, where flight instructor Aubrey Knudegard trained him to fly in an Aeronca 7AC Champion, built in Middletown, Ohio. The Aeronca Airplane Company had been a pioneer in the production of light, single-wing aircraft for private flying, and Armstrong learned to fly the plane with skill. Since the initial flights in 1903 of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the growth of aerospace research had been concentrated at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and the Miami Valley had become a center of postwar aviation development and testing. Armstrong was flying from a local airfield not far from this national air base. He also became an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.

In the fall of 1947, following his graduation from Wapakoneta High School, Armstrong entered Purdue University at Lafayette, Indiana, on a United States Navy scholarship. Enrolled in the College of Engineering, he had completed about two years of study when the Navy ordered him to report to Pensacola, Florida, for special flight training. After the outbreak of the Korean War in July 1950, Armstrong was the youngest member of his unit, Fighter Squadron 51, when it was sent overseas for active duty. He flew seventy-eight combat missions from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier the USS Essex. One mission nearly cost him his life: His Panther jet, damaged by antiaircraft fire, nicked a cable stretched across a North Korean valley; with grim determination and skill, he guided the plane back into South Korea before parachuting to safety. Armstrong won three Air Medals for his combat duty. (Author James Michener modeled his classic 1953 novel The Bridges of Toko-Ri after Armstrong and some other fliers in the squadron.)

On completion of his naval service in 1952, Armstrong returned to Purdue to finish his bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering, graduating in 1955. On campus, he met Janet Shearon of Evanston, Illinois, who shared his love for flying; their college courtship led to marriage on January 28, 1956. Three children were born to the Armstrongs: Eric, born in 1957, Karen, born in 1959 (she died before reaching the age of three), and Mark, born in 1963.

Life’s Work

Armstrong went to work at the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland, serving as a research pilot. After six months at Lewis, he transferred to the High Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where he served as an aeronautical research pilot testing many pioneering aircraft, including the X-15 rocket airplane (he took it to more than 200,000 feet above Earth’s surface and flew at speeds of nearly four thousand miles per hour), the X-1, F-100, F-101, F-102, F-104, F5D, B-47, and the paraglider. In all, he flew more than two hundred different kinds of aircraft. While in California, he began his master of science degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California, completing it in 1969.

Spurred by the Soviet Union’s successful launching of the first Earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, the United States in 1958 established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to coordinate all space research projects sponsored by the federal government. Soon NASA began training spacecraft pilots called “astronauts” for orbital flights. Explorer 1 became the first successful American data-gathering space satellite, launched in January 1958. It was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, however, who became the first human in space orbit, in April 1961, aboard the Vostok 1; the United States sent its first piloted capsule into suborbital flight in May 1961, with Alan Shepard flying in Freedom 7. That month, President John F. Kennedy, in an address to Congress, called for the nation to land the first person on the moon by the end of the decade.

While still working at NASA’s facility at Edwards Air Force Base (consolidated into NASA), Armstrong applied to be one of the NASA astronauts. The requirements favored men from military units, but Armstrong was accepted in 1962; he was the first civilian admitted to the astronaut program by NASA. The Armstrongs moved to El Lago, Texas, and Armstrong joined the nation’s second recruit class of astronauts in training at the new NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston for a two-year intensive program of classroom study and training for space travel.

NASA developed three space programs while Armstrong worked as an astronaut. The first, designated Project Mercury, was to develop the technology and experience to send a person into Earth orbit. On February 20, 1962, the first piloted orbital flight launched by the United States carried John Glenn as pilot of a three-orbit space trip. The Gemini program, created in 1962, launched a series of two-person spacecraft in Earth orbit during 1965 and 1966, as well as two unpiloted and ten piloted ventures. Project Apollo, created in 1960, was redirected in 1962 to land on the moon by 1970, using a three-person crew. Nine crewed Apollo missions of lunar orbit or landings were made by the end of that program in 1972.

Armstrong was assigned as a command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission launched on March 16, 1966. He successfully performed the first docking of two vehicles (one piloted, the other unpiloted) in space. Shortly thereafter, he and David R. Scott found the two crafts pitching and spinning out of control. Fearing that the stress and strain of spinning could tear the spacecraft apart, Armstrong detached their Gemini capsule, and then, as it began to roll even faster, brought it back under control and made an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean. A mechanical defect in one of the thrusters was later identified as the cause of the uncontrollable spin, but Armstrong was able to remain calm and to avoid a potential disaster by making the emergency landing. He later served as commander of the backup crew for Gemini 11 and late in 1966, at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson, went on a twenty-four-day goodwill tour of South America with other astronauts.

It was as spacecraft commander of Apollo 11, the first piloted lunar landing mission in history, that Armstrong gained the distinction of being the first to land a craft on the moon and the first to step on its surface, an event that was achieved on July 20, 1969, four days after the craft’s launch. Michael Collins served as command module pilot of the Columbia, which orbited the moon while Armstrong and Colonel Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. (known as Buzz Aldrin), aboard the four-legged lunar module called the Eagle, landed near the Sea of Tranquility (at about 4:18 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time) and explored the surface before the rendezvous with the Columbia for the return trip.

The next day, the New York Times ran the headline, “Men Walk on Moon: Astronauts Land on Plain; Collect Rocks, Plant Flag.” Relating one of humanity’s most historic moments, a journalist recounted,

About six and a half hours [following the lunar landing], Mr. Armstrong opened the landing craft’s hatch, stepped slowly down the ladder and declared as he planted the first human footprint on the lunar crust:

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

His first step on the moon came at 10:56:20 p.m., as a television camera outside the craft transmitted his every move to an awed and excited audience of hundreds of millions of people on Earth.

Colonel Aldrin soon joined Armstrong and, in a two-and-a-half-hour stay outside the Eagle, the two set up a camera for live television transmission, conducted seismographic and laser experiments, planted a United States flag, and collected samples of moon soil and rocks. After twenty-two hours, they blasted off to rejoin the Columbia, climbed back into the command module, jettisoned the lunar Eagle, and returned to Earth to splash down southeast of Hawaii and were personally welcomed by President Richard M. Nixon aboard the USS Hornet. Nixon said: “You have taught man how to reach for the stars.”

For eighteen days after the splashdown, the three lunar astronauts were kept in isolation to avoid any possible contamination from the moon’s environment. Once released, New York City welcomed them with the greatest ticker-tape parade since Charles A. Lindbergh’s solo flight to Paris in 1927. At the White House, they received the nation’s highest civilian honor: the Presidential Medal of Freedom was given to each of them. In the next months, they visited twenty-two nations and were awarded medals and citations from governments and scientific organizations around the world.

Armstrong was reassigned to the position of deputy associate administrator for aeronautics, Office of Advanced Research and Technology, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, where he was responsible for the coordination and management of NASA research and technology related to aeronautics. Warned in his correspondence with Charles A. Lindbergh of the dangers of fame, he resolutely shunned the limelight and evaded reporters and photographers.

In the fall of 1971, at the urging of his friend Paul Herget, astronomer and professor of space science, whose work in the field of minor planets and in satellite orbits had won world recognition, Armstrong accepted an appointment as professor of engineering at the University of Cincinnati, an interdisciplinary post he retained until 1980. After their return to Ohio, the Armstrongs lived on a farm near Lebanon, Warren County, where their sons were graduated from high school.

Between 1979 and 1981, Armstrong worked part-time for the Chrysler Corporation and appeared in a national advertising campaign for the Detroit car manufacturer. For a short time, he and his brother Dean owned and operated the Cardwell International Corporation, a producer and exporter of oil field equipment. He later headed CTA, an aviation company based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Sought by many major corporations, Armstrong accepted positions on the board of directors of several companies, including Gates Learjet and United Airlines. In the 1980s, although carefully guarding his schedule, he became a popular speaker at national conventions and trade associations as well as a commencement speaker for many universities, some of which awarded him honorary degrees. He turned down offers from both major political parties to run for office.

Following the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle on January 28, 1986, in which seven astronauts lost their lives, President Ronald Reagan named William Rogers chair and Neil Armstrong vice chair of a presidential commission to investigate the causes of the Challenger’s failure. For the next six months, Armstrong served as an active member of that commission, appearing on television and before Congress with Rogers to report on the findings of the commission. After the Rogers Commission disbanded, Armstrong served on the board of directors of Thiokol, the corporation that had manufactured the rocket booster that caused the disaster.

In 1989, he was divorced from Janet. During a golf tournament in 1992, Armstrong met Carol Held Knight; they married two years later, on June 12, 1994. In addition to creating difficulties in his first marriage, his fame sometimes caused him embarrassment and problems. He stopped signing autographs in 1994 after learning that the autographed items were being sold for thousands of dollars on such venues as the internet company eBay, and he twice initiated lawsuits against those who used his name, words, or in one case his hair without his permission or knowledge. He donated the settlements to charities. Additionally, Armstrong was the subject of a bizarre rumor, beginning in the 1980s and resurfacing periodically for the next several decades, that he had converted to Islam after hearing a call to prayer on the moon. Though false, the hoax was apparently perpetuated by Armstrong's efforts to avoid publicity and the fact that his residence in Lebanon, Ohio, was confused with the predominantly Muslim country of Lebanon.

Armstrong retired from business on May 7, 2002, resigning as chair of the board of EDO Corporation, an advanced technology firm serving defense, intelligence, and commercial markets in New York. He had become chair in 2000.

In 2005, a long-standing controversy was revived over what exactly Armstrong had said when he first stepped onto the Moon’s surface. He always maintained that he had said “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind”; however, the “a” went unheard and the resulting statement, seemingly a mere redundancy, was sometimes ridiculed. A computer programmer in Australia, Peter Shann Ford, reprocessed the audio recording with advanced computer equipment and discovered that Armstrong was correct; an “a,” only 35 milliseconds long, emerged from the reprocessing. Hidden in the static of the original transmission, the correct version reflected Armstrong’s modest attempt to deflect attention from himself and include all humanity in the event.

Honors came early to Armstrong for his moon landing and continued throughout his life. The Boy Scouts gave him the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award. He also received the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy, and the National Aeronautics Association’s Collier Trophy. Many places have been named after him, including a moon crater near his landing site, schools, streets, and, in 2004, the new engineering building at his alma mater. Armstrong also continued his educational efforts late into his life. He provided the voice for a character in the 2010 animated film Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, produced by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an educational science fiction film.

Armstrong died on August 25, 2012, in Cincinnati, Ohio, following complications resulting from cardiovascular surgery. Various tributes were made in his honor after his death, signifying his status as an iconic figure in history. He was given a burial at sea in the Atlantic Ocean in September 2012. Shortly after the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing, the New York Times received documentation of a medical dispute and secret settlement over Armstrong’s death from an anonymous sender. The documents reported that Armstrong’s family sued the hospital he was treated in for wrongful death after Armstrong died after having bypass surgery. According to reports, temporary wires were implanted into Armstrong’s heart to help pace his heartbeat in a standart part of the procedure; when the wires were removed, Armstrong began to bleed internally. He was taken first to the catheterization lab before being moved to an operating room. Armstrong died shortly after. Two of the three doctors who reviewed the case—one hired by the Armstrong’s family, two hired by the hospital—stated that if Armstrong had been brought directly to the operating room, he would likely have lived. In 2014, the hospital reportedly settled with the family for $6 million and the family signed nondisclosure agreements.

Significance

When the three astronauts of Apollo 11 addressed a joint session of the United States Congress on September 16, 1969, Armstrong recalled how they had left a bronze plaque on the Eagle’s remnants. It declared: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969, a.d. We came in peace for all mankind.” Such sentiments reflect the noble convictions of Armstrong: He saw his individual role in the gigantic space exploration mission as that of only one member of the nation’s great team; his accomplishment as a victory for the whole of human endeavor: “a giant leap for mankind,” “in peace for all mankind.” Hence, he was able to return quietly to university and business activities after becoming one of the world’s greatest explorers of all time. In 2005, First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong, the official biography of Armstong, was written by James R. Hansen. The book was adapted into a biopic film of the same name in 2018.

Bibliography

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