Neil Armstrong <<

Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon

When Neil Armstrong planted the first human footprint on the powdery surface of the moon on 21st July 1969, he walked into the history books.

A civilian astronaut employed by NASA, Neil Armstrong was the command pilot of Apollo II in which he voyaged to the moon with Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins of the US Airforce.

About Neil Armstrong ...

Neil Armstrong's overriding interest as he grew up was aviation. On his 16th birthday he received his pilot's licence and on graduation he entered university to study aeronautical engineering as a naval air cadet. He flew 78 combat missions in Korea, won three air medals, and on his return to university taught maths while finishing his studies for a BS degree.

Upon graduating, Neil Armstrong became a civilian research pilot and participated in flight test work on, among others, the F-100, B47 and F 102 supersonic fighter planes and the X-15 rocket plane designed for flights to the fringe of space. He logged more than 1100 hours and a comment made at the time was "He flies an airplane like he's wearing it".

Neil Armstrong's voyages ...

After 7 years as a test pilot, Neil Armstrong volunteered for the astronaut programme which he joined in 1962. As command pilot of Gemini 8 he performed the first manual space docking in 1966, and coped with a jet thruster malfunction which sent the coupled vehicles into a near-fatal spin. NASA acknowledged that it was his extraordinary piloting skill which meant the voyage ended with nothing worse than an emergency splashdown.

The Apollo voyage was announced in January 1969. Lift-off was on 16th July and today, most people can still recall exactly what they were doing when they watched Neil Armstrong's "small step".

On their return the astronauts were greeted by US President Richard Nixon and given a heroes' welcome ticker-tape parade and a 22 nation world tour. At that time Neil Armstrong summed up his philosophy of life as "The single thing which makes any man happiest is his realisation that he has worked up to the limits of his ability, his capacity." Since then Neil has been the recipient of numerous awards and medals of honour worldwide.

Neil Armstrong subsequently held the position of Deputy Associate Administrator for Aeronautics, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C., where he was responsible for the coordination and management of overall NASA research and technology work related to aeronautics.

After resigning from NASA in 1971, Neil Armstrong became a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati from 1971 to 1979. During the years 1982-1992, he served as chairman of Computing Technologies for Aviation, Inc., in Charlottesville, Virginia. He then became chairman of the board of AIL Systems, Inc., an electronics systems company in Deer Park, New York. At the present time, he lives on his farm in Lebanon, Ohio.