When he appeared in Dayton in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before 10,000 people packed into a baseball stadium. “As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind’s first small step on a world beyond our own,” Bolden said in a statement.Īrmstrong’s modesty and self-effacing manner never faded. NASA chief Charles Bolden recalled Armstrong’s grace and humility. “The moon will miss its first son of earth,” Romney said. Obama’s Republican opponent Mitt Romney echoed those sentiments, calling Armstrong an American hero whose passion for space, science and discovery will inspire him for the rest of his life. They set out to show the world that the American spirit can see beyond what seems unimaginable - that with enough drive and ingenuity, anything is possible,” Obama said. “When he and his fellow crew members lifted off aboard Apollo 11 in 1969, they carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation. He testified before Congress and in an email to The Associated Press, Armstrong said he had “substantial reservations,” and along with more than two dozen Apollo-era veterans, he signed a letter calling the plan a “misguided proposal that forces NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future.”Īrmstrong was among the greatest of American heroes, Obama said in a statement. “And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.”Ī man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama’s space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasized private companies developing spaceships. “I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer,” he said in February 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, a 184-pound satellite that sent shock waves around the world.Īlthough he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA’s forerunner and an astronaut, Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamour of the space program. The moonwalk marked America’s victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. “The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to,” Armstrong once said.
NEIL ARMSTRONG FIRST MAN ON THE MOON PATCH
In those first few moments on the moon, during the climax of a heated space race with the then-Soviet Union, Armstrong stopped in what he called “a tender moment” and left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action. (Armstrong insisted later that he had said “a” before man, but said he too couldn’t hear it in the version that went to the world.) “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Armstrong said.
More: The famous lost word in Armstrong’s ‘mankind’ quote His first words after becoming the first person to set foot on the surface are etched in history books and the memories of those who heard them in a live broadcast. His family didn’t say where he died he had lived in suburban Cincinnati.Īrmstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century’s scientific expeditions.
Armstrong had a bypass operation this month, according to NASA. He was 82.Īrmstrong died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, his family said in a statement. The modest man, who had people on Earth entranced and awed from almost a quarter-million miles away, but credited others for the feat, died Saturday. CINCINNATI - Neil Armstrong was a soft-spoken engineer who became a global hero when as a steely-nerved pilot he made “one giant leap for mankind” with a small step onto the moon.
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