Neil Armstrong, First Man To Walk On Moon, Dead At 82

Neil Armstrong on the Moon in 1969.

“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for Mankind.”

Those were the first words that any human being ever spoke on another world, when Neil Armstrong was the first to set foot on the Moon in 1969. Now Armstrong has made another leap into the great unknown, having passed away today at the age of 82.
Before he became an astronaut, Armstrong served in the Navy as a pilot during the Korean War. After the War, he became a test pilot. He joined the Astronaut Corps in 1962 and first traveled into space in 1966 on Gemini 8.
Armstrong’s second flight was also his most famous, when he commanded the Apollo 11 mission and became the first person to set foot on its surface. This was also his last flight as an astronaut.
After his historic journey, Armstrong did his best to keep a low public profile. He was a professor for eight years, and also served stints on some corporate boards. He served NASA on two accident investigation commissions, for Apollo 13 and the Challenger.
One of my favorite things about Neil Armstrong was how he felt about walking on the Moon. As a pilot, he didn’t see the walking as a big deal. As he told an interviewer once:
“The exciting part for me, as a pilot, was the landing on the moon. That was the time that we had achieved the national goal of putting Americans on the moon. The landing approach was, by far, the most difficult and challenging part of the flight. Walking on the lunar surface was very interesting, but it was something we looked on as reasonably safe and predictable. So the feeling of elation accompanied the landing rather than the walking.”