Neil Armstrong

His father audited county books for the state of Ohio, which meant 16 towns in 14 years. The boy built model aircraft and took his first ride at five or six in a Ford Trimotor. At Wapakoneta he paid for lessons at the local field, earned a student flight certificate on his 16th birthday and soloed that August, before he had a licence to drive. Purdue took him at 17 on a Navy scholarship: two years of study, then flight training and service, then the rest of the degree. He flew 78 missions over Korea. On one, a cable strung across a valley as a booby trap took six feet off his wing at 500 feet, and he brought the jet back over friendly ground before ejecting.

NASA handed him the hard days and he kept coming back with the aircraft. On Gemini 8, in March 1966, he made the first docking of two spacecraft, then a stuck thruster set the joined vehicles turning about once a second — he undocked, killed the roll with the re-entry system, and splashed down with the mission cancelled. In May 1968 the lunar landing trainer rolled over on him 100 feet up and he ejected seconds before it burned. BriefHistory has the landing and the sentence. This page has what it cost the man who said it.

In June 1961 his daughter Karen was found to have a tumor in her brain stem. X-rays slowed it, then she could not walk or talk, and she died of pneumonia on January 28, 1962, aged two — the Armstrongs' sixth wedding anniversary. He almost never spoke of her. Instead the public got a man who guarded his name like a patent. He refused MTV the use of his voice in 1981. He sued Hallmark in 1994 for putting the one small step recording in a Christmas ornament, and gave the settlement to Purdue. He stopped signing autographs around 1993 after finding forgeries for sale, and in 2005 made his barber of 20 years surrender the proceeds after the man sold his cut hair to a collector for 3,000 dollars. His 38-year marriage ended in divorce in 1994.

He died on August 25, 2012, of complications after bypass surgery, and his ashes went into the Atlantic from a Navy cruiser. In 2014 the hospital paid his sons six million dollars to settle a claim that nurses had pulled his pacemaker wires and doctors had waited too long to operate, on condition the family never discuss it. Someone mailed 93 pages of the file to The New York Times, which published in July 2019. His widow had not joined the suit and thought he would have refused it. By then the sons had auctioned his flags, medals and Boy Scout cap for 16.7 million dollars. People still argue about whether he said one small step for a man.

Neil Armstrong's life against the full span of the corpus.

• X-15 research flights mission
  Seven flights, a top speed of Mach 5.74 and the first use of the MH-96 control system 1962
• Gemini 8 mission
  The first docking of two spacecraft, and the first in-flight emergency in orbit 1966
• Apollo 11 mission
  Commander. He took manual control and landed with the fuel nearly gone 1969
• Apollo 13 accident review other
  He traced the flight minute by minute for the Cortright inquiry 1970
• Rogers Commission report other
  Vice chairman of the Challenger investigation 1986
• First Flights with Neil Armstrong television
  An aviation history series he hosted for A and E 1991

• August 5, 1946 aged 16 Earns a student flight certificate on his 16th birthday He soloed that month, still without a driver's license.
• September 3, 1951 aged 21 Loses six feet of wing to a booby-trap cable over Korea He flew back to friendly territory and ejected. A flight school roommate picked him up.
• January 28, 1956 aged 25 Marries Janet Shearon at Wilmette, Illinois
• January 28, 1962 aged 31 His daughter Karen dies at two of a brain-stem tumor It was his sixth wedding anniversary.
• March 16, 1966 aged 35 Docks Gemini 8 with an Agena, then fights a stuck thruster The joined craft rolled about once a second before he broke it off.
• May 6, 1968 aged 37 Ejects from the lunar landing trainer at 100 feet The vehicle burned. He was back at his desk the same day.
• July 20, 1969 aged 38 Lands the Eagle and steps onto the Moon
• 1971 aged ~41 Leaves NASA to teach aerospace engineering at Cincinnati He stayed eight years, took a heavy load and graded hard.
• August 25, 2012 aged 82 Dies at 82 of complications from bypass surgery

• John F. Kennedy 1917–1963
  35th President whose brief tenure included the Cuban Missile Crisis and the launch of the Apollo program. set the goal
• Wernher von Braun 1912–1977
  German-American aerospace engineer who led the development of the Saturn V rocket that took humans to the Moon. built the rocket
• Margaret Hamilton b. 1936
  Directed development of the Apollo onboard flight software and popularized the term software engineering. wrote the landing software
• Katherine Johnson 1918–2020
  NASA mathematician whose orbital trajectory calculations supported the Mercury and Apollo crewed flights. computed the trajectories
• Chuck Yeager 1923–2020
  Air Force test pilot who first exceeded the speed of sound in level flight in 1947. flew with him once, badly
• Charles Lindbergh 1902–1974
  Aviator who made the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in 1927. the earlier version of the same fame