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From nerdy engineer to global hero
From nerdy engineer to global hero

Neil Armstrong was a quiet, self-described "nerdy" engineer who became a global hero when as a steely nerved United States pilot he made "one giant leap for mankind" with the first step on the moon. The modest man who entranced and awed people on earth has died. He was 82.

Armstrong died on Saturday following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, a statement from his family said. It didn't say where he died.







The moonwalk marked America's victory in the Cold War space race that began on October 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, a satellite that sent shock waves around the world.

An estimated 600 million people - a fifth of the world's population - watched and listened to the moon landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.

Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerised. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to watch on TV.



Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley, who interviewed Armstrong for oral histories for NASA, said Armstrong fitted every requirement the space agency needed for the first man to walk on the moon, especially because of his engineering skills and the way he handled celebrity by shunning it.


A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama's space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasised private companies developing spaceships.

NASA chief Charles Bolden recalled Armstrong's grace and humility in a statement on Saturday.


In a statement issued by the White House, Obama said Armstrong was one of the greatest of American heroes, "not just of his time, but of all time".

Armstrong's modesty and self-effacing manner never faded.


He later joined former astronaut and senator John Glenn to lay wreaths on the graves of aeroplane inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright. Glenn introduced Armstrong and noted it was 34 years to the day that Armstrong had walked on the moon.


At another joint appearance, the two embraced and Glenn commented: "To this day, he's the one person on earth, I'm truly, truly envious of."


In the years afterward, Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his Ohio farm. Aldrin said in his book Men From Earth that Armstrong was one of the quietest, most private men he had ever met.

In the Australian interview, Armstrong acknowledged that "now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an aeroplane and doing new things".

At the time of the flight's 40th anniversary, Armstrong again was low-key, telling a gathering that the space race was "the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus USSR. It did allow both sides to take the high road, with the objectives of science and learning and exploration."


Glenn said on Saturday that Armstrong had had a number of close calls in his career. He recalled how Armstrong had just 15 seconds to 35 seconds of fuel remaining when he landed on the moon. He called Armstrong's skill and dedication "just exemplary".



The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President John F Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the US into space the previous month.







For Americans, reaching the moon provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War. The landing occurred as organisers were preparing for Woodstock, the legendary rock festival on a farm in New York.

Armstrong was born August 5, 1930, on a farm in Ohio. He took his first aeroplane ride at the age of six and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's licence.



Armstrong was back-up commander for the Apollo 8 mission in late 1968. In that flight, Commander Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell and Bill Anders circled the moon 10 times, and paving the way for the lunar landing seven months later.


"But there was that moment on the moon, a brief moment, in which we sort of looked at each other and slapped each other on the shoulder ... and said, 'We made it. Good show' or something like that," Aldrin said.








