Saturday, August 25, 2012

First Man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, Dies at 82

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon, capping an incredible space race that pitted the United States space program against the Soviet Union. The "reluctant American hero" died at 82 today due to complications from heart-bypass surgery he underwent earlier this month.

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," he radioed back to Earth from the moon on July 20, 1969.

Fellow moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, from the Apollo 11 mission, said of Armstrong, "We are missing a great spokesman and leader in the space program."

A Navy fighter pilot in the Korean War, Armstrong joined NASA's second astronaut class in 1962.

After his moon mission, Armstrong remained out of sight. As his family called him, he was a "reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job." He left NASA in 1971.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary


No comments: