Remembering Neil Armstrong

43 years after the first landing on the moon, the event was in the news again a fortnight ago. But this time for different and sad reasons. The first man to set foot of the moon was no more. Neil Armstrong had died at the age of 82.

Glancing through my moderate collection, I found the first day cover and souvenir sheet with the four stamps issued by our postal department on 10 November 1989 to mark the 20th anniversary of the moon landing (the event was on 20 July 1969). Neil Armstrong featured in three of the four stamps.

The 75 cents stamp showed the launching pad and the three astronauts – civilian Armstrong and his crewmates, Air Force pilots Edwin E ‘Buzz’ Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins. Taking centre stage was, of course, Neil Armstrong – the Re. 1 stamp featuring him stepping on to the moon surface and the Rs. 2 stamp showing him walking on the moon. A scene of the earth from the moon was used in the Rs. 5.75 stamp.

In the past two weeks, there were many tributes paid to the man who created history – the hero who shunned publicity and didn’t even publish a memoir. “I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer,” he told a millennial gathering honouring the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century. A quiet engineer and test pilot and a former Navy fighter pilot, he commanded the NASA crew to the moon.  

Just as his boyhood idol, transatlantic aviator Charles A. Lindbergh (he made the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on 20-21 May 1927), had done, Armstrong also avoided the popular media.

In a feature published in the Washington Post, his authorised biographer, James, a former NASA historian, was quoted as saying that Armstrong was “exceedingly circumspect” from a young age, and the glare of international attention “just deepened a personality trait that he already had in spades.”

The feature captured the exciting mood of the much looked forward to event. “Armstrong’s skill and composure were put to no greater test than the anxious minutes starting at 4.05 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, July 20, 1969. That was when the lunar module carrying Armstrong and Aldrin, having separated from the Apollo 11 capsule, began its hazardous, nine mile final descent to the moon’s Sea of Tranquility. Collins, waiting in lunar orbit, could only hope the two would make it back.

“Mr. Armstrong, as planned, took manual control of the LM (dubbed ‘Eagle’) at 500 feet. Standing in the cramped cockpit, piloting with a control stick and toggle switch, he manoeuvred past the crater he had seen whilst scanning the rugged moonscape for a place to safely put down. Although the world remembers him best for walking on the moon, Mr. Armstrong recalled his time on the surface as anticlimactic, ‘something we looked on as reasonably safe and predictable.’”

Flying the LM was “by far the most difficult and challenging part” of the mission, he told a group of youngsters in an e-mail exchange. The “very high risk” descent was “extremely complex,” he wrote, and guiding the craft gave him a “feeling of elation.”

“Pilots take no particular joy in walking,” he once remarked. “Pilots like flying.”