http://news.yahoo.com/neil-armstrong-1st-man-moon-dies-193954975.html
It was said he was the perfect man to be the first to step foot on another world. He never embarrassed his country and was quiet and reserved. One of his least known yet most famous statements among pilots was in answer to a reporters query at a press conference; when asked if there was anything that was personally very important to him that NASA would not let him take to the moon, he answered, “more fuel.”
As it turned out he landed on the moon with a few seconds of fuel to spare after maneuvering clear of a boulder field. His co-pilot, Dr. Rendezvous, had already crashed the computer by turning a radar on early in the descent. He had shown the same nerves of steel during the Gemini program when his capsule continued to accelerate in a spin after a thruster fired and would not shut down. Nearing unconsciousness he worked the problem almost to the bitter end and finally regained control.
Sadly, the same resolve and crystal clear focus was never to be found in America’s space program after Apollo. With no vehicle capable of carrying astronauts into orbit and nothing but budget cuts on the horizon, the U.S. space program has effectively died with it’s greatest hero. No direction, no goal, nothing is foreseen to be accomplished in the coming decades as the political football that is human spaceflight is kicked from administration to administration. The trillion dollar war and piles of rubble on the other side of the world are the grave of the space age. We have only the past and the people who had a mission to remember.
Good luck Neil.
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