Neil Armstrong: A tribute

Neil Armstrong, an aerospace engineer,  university professor, navy combat pilot, X-15 test pilot, command pilot of Gemini 8 mission, commander of Apollo 11 mission and of course, the first person to walk on the moon, passed away on 25^th August due to complications resulting from heart surgery. He was 81.

I vividly remember the first time I heard about Neil Armstrong. It was a rainy afternoon and we were getting restless in our first Geography class of standard V. The teacher, Ms. Shabnam Mirza, wrote the name Neil Armstrong on the board in her beautiful handwriting and asked us if we knew who this man was. None of us did. She told us, “He is the first man to land on the Moon”.

Big deal, was our reaction. We were more excited about who would be the first boy to set foot on the football ground during the recess.

It was only later, in standard eight, when I began to read “Invasion of Moon: The Story of Apollo 11” by Peter Ryan, when the awesomeness of the moon-landing mission began to dawn on me. So much so, that I even translated the book into Marathi, up until the point when Armstrong steps on Moon and says, “One step for a man, one giant leap for a mankind”. Try what I might, I could never translate this particular line into Marathi and the project stalled.

Contrary to the popular opinion that Neil was hand-picked by NASA to be the first man to step on the Moon, the real reasons were far more practical. He served on the backup crew for Apollo-8 and as per the three-mission rotation system, he became the commander Apollo-11, which incidentally became the moon landing mission. Armstrong himself always downplayed his role and insisted that it could have easily been either Apollo 10 or Apollo 12 crew to land on the moon. Of course, what he didn't mention was the fact that he didn't have a big ego and he was a civilian astronaut had only helped the matter.

As much as the fact that he became the first human to step on the Moon, my admiration for Armstrong was for two other reasons.
One, he was the quintessential cool guy. As a test pilot, he risked his life testing the X-15 jets at almost the edge of the space. During the Gemini 8 mission, his spacecraft went into a dangerous spin and began tumbling end over end at 1 rotation per second. On the brink of losing consciousness, Armstrong managed to bring the spacecraft under control.

While training for the lunar landing, his training craft crashed at a very low altitude, but Armstrong ejected from it at the last possible moment.  0.5  seconds late, and he would have crashed. After this incident, people found him in his office, working through his papers. When questioned whether he wasn’t shaken, he said, there were things to be done that needed to be done.

The actual lunar landing was no cakewalk, either. First, the lunar module computer became overloaded and started raising alarms (1201 and 1202). When this was determined not to be a show-stopper, Armstrong looked out of his window and realized that the guidance system was taking them straight into a boulder-full of craters. Taking over manual control of the lunar lander, Armstrong inched the craft to a safe landing area. As he did so, another problem cropped up: The fuel was getting low. After a couple of minutes of nerve-wrecking drama, Armstrong landed Eagle near the Sea of Tranquility, with only 15 seconds of fuel remaining.

After completing their moonwalk, when Armstrong and Aldrin prepared to launch back from the surface of the moon, they discovered that the circuit breaker needed to start the engine was broken. Without it, they would be marooned on the moon. But they used a nib of a fountain pen to complete the circuit and successfully lifted off from the Moon.

And, the second reason why I admire Armstrong: his decision to shun the limelight.

After the historic moon landing and finishing with a whirlwind world tour to celebrate it, Armstrong retired from NASA and took up a teaching position at Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati.  He rarely gave interviews and gave very few public speeches.  Unlike some of his fellow astronauts, who cashed out on the fame and fortune from their astronaut years (nothing wrong in that, in fact), Armstrong abhorred spotlight. He always maintained that the successful flight of Apollo 11 was a culmination of far more hazardous flights of Gemini and Apollo.

When asked how he felt after becoming a global celebrity, Armstrong remarked,

“I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket-protector nerdy engineer – born under the law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-flow dynamics, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow.”

When asked about how it felt to be on the Moon, he quipped,

“It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it.”

One anecdote about Armstrong, the university professor: He once walked in the class, and asked if anyone had any questions about the subject. When all students replied in the negative, he walked out, remarking that he would be back only when someone could think up some questions to ask.

Armstrong’s speech after receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009 is a good example of his wit and humility.

True to his reserved nature, Armstrong didn’t write an autobiography, but thankfully for all of us, he authorized James Hansen to write his biography and gave the author full access to his personal archives. I am looking forward to buying a copy of it sometime.

It’s a sad feeling to realize that one of your idols is no longer around.

May his soul rest in the peace of space.