Thoughts on Solar

This isn’t a solar story, but I cannot let the death of Neil Armstrong, a true American Hero, pass without comment. Like many of my era, I grew up on the Space Program, getting up at the crack of dawn to watch my heroes sit on top of a missile - a missile that had had an annoying tendency to explode on the launch pad - and listen to them  tell the “control boys” to “light this candle".  These were the men of “The Right Stuff” and their courage and can-do attitude was a huge inspiration to me.

Neil Armstrong was special.  Amongst a cadre of chest-thumping fly boys, Neil was a self-described “nerdy engineer".  But he could fly - oh how he could fly.  His first mission into space, on Gemini 8 featured a docking maneuver with the melodiously named Augmented Target Docking Adapter.  It looked a bit like a crocodile in space.  Docking was a key task to master on President Kennedy’s march to the moon, and the ATDA was an early test of that ability.  Except that when Armstrong completed the docking maneuver, a thruster on the ATDA started firing, uncontrollably.  As a result, the combined spacecraft started to tumble out of control - an episode that could have easily resulted in severe damage to the Gemini module, and possibly the death of the two astronauts.  But Neil managed to disengage, arrest the tumble and restore control to the mission.  He was the epitome of grace under pressure.

It prepared him well for the moon.  On final descent, with fuel running low, Neil did not like what he saw out the Lunar Module windows - boulders big enough to jeopardize the landing.  Armstrong overrode the computer and landed the LM manually - and the rest is history.  Most remember what he said that night and marvel at his poise at an indisputable historical moment - but few realize that without his quiet heroics a few hours earlier, the entire mission could have ended in tragedy.

I watched Neil (and his tormented colleague Buzz Aldrin) cavort on the moon from a restaurant in Pasadena - we were there celebrating my sister’s birthday - and always ached for solitary Michael Collins as he orbited a scant few miles overhead - so close, but yet so far.  I suspect that none of us who watched that event live will ever forget it.  I mourn for the fact that my own daughter has never known the thrill that I routinely experienced as a child following those exploits, and most especially that one, famous night.

In the years that followed, Armstrong eschewed the spotlight and refused to accept the mantle of hero.  Yet a hero he was, to me and most of the 600 million people who are estimated to have watched him step out of the LM and into history.

Yet I do believe that his spirit lives on - look at the amazing things that his engineering colleagues at JPL just accomplished with Curiosity - and no doubt they were inspired by his nerdy heroism so long ago.

Rest in Peace, Neil Armstrong - well done.