55 years ago, on July 20th, the military pilot, test pilot and aerospace engineer, Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the Moon. It was 5:17 pm, Brasília time, when the then commander of Apollo 11 left the lunar module, and left his footprint imprinted in the regolith. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for humanity,” he said.
Years later, he insisted to journalists that he had not said “the” man, but “a” man. In any case, the feat, broadcast to the world on TV, transformed Armstrong into the most famous man on the planet, on the eve of turning 39 years old. A week later, he was welcomed as a hero, along with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, in the Pacific Ocean.
But at the height of his fame, he decided to shun the spotlight and return to his home state of Ohio, where he was born on a farm in 1920. His next journey included a career as a college professor at the University of Cincinnati, in which he joined the faculty of the School of Aerospace Engineering, in 1971.
In an interview with NBC News’ Mach section, Armstrong’s official biographer, James Hansen, stated that “it was never about fame or fortune for him. It was about flying.” Author of the book “First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong”, which served as the basis for the 2018 film with Ryan Gosling, Hansen summarizes the commander’s motto: “We will fly this module to a successful landing, and not kill us.”
The boy who liked to fly
Encouraged by his father Stephen, who took him to watch the Cleveland Air Race at the age of two, Neil boarded a plane for the first time at the age of five, also taken by his father. When his brothers June and Dean were born, he had them throw the wooden planes he made from the top floor of the house and controlled their landings on the floor with a popsicle stick.
So it’s no surprise that Armstrong received his first pilot’s license at age 16, before he even got his driver’s license. After graduating from high school, he entered Purdue University in West Lafayette, where he graduated in Space Engineering on a US Navy scholarship.
After serving in the Korean War as a pilot and graduating from Purdue, Armstrong married his first wife, Janet, in 1956 and began working as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California, where they moved. According to the biographer, when he flew over his house, the pilot tilted the plane’s wings to say “hello” to his wife and son.
In January 1962, Neil and Janet’s daughter Karen died at the age of three from a brain tumor. The tragedy had a major impact on the pilot’s life, even affecting the quality of his flights. Friends and co-workers say he aged rapidly during this prolonged episode, about which he kept silent for many years.
Entering NASA and flying to the Moon
Still experiencing grief, Armstrong was selected for the NASA Astronaut Corps (United States space agency) in September 1962, and the family moved to Lancaster, California. He was not yet considered a prominent pilot, and his first mission was Gemini VIII in 1965 as a reserve pilot.
In 1967, the White House wanted the commander of the lunar mission to be a civilian, and NASA leaders chose Neil Armstrong not only as commander of the Apollo 11 mission, but also the first man to exit the module and set foot on lunar soil. As he was very reserved, the only explanation for his choice was his emotional stability and his humble and professional personality.
In the 2018 film, there is a mysterious scene that actually occurred and was not in the mission script. Close to the end of his expected time on the Moon, 21 hours and 36 minutes, Armstrong left the lunar module and went to the Little West crater, where he dropped an object he carried in his so-called personal property kit.
With time almost running out, the commander had to run to get back to the lunar module, and his heart rate rose to more than 180 bpm. Since the lunar module’s TV camera wasn’t pointed at him, we don’t know what he left lying there. In the film, Ryan Gosling drops his daughter Karen’s bracelet.
The scene is not in Hansen’s book, but it is true that each astronaut took their kit with personal or third-party objects to be left on the Moon. Before the flight, each one wrote down what they were taking into space in a kind of declaration of content.
Hansen knew this and asked Armstrong to display his during one of the interviews for the book. The “first man” said he would look for the small inventory and, when he found it, he would show it. He didn’t show it. He died on August 25, 2012, aged 82, from hospital complications following heart bypass surgery.
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