“I am, and ever will be, a
white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer.”
--Commander Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11
He did the work.
And it was this work, in part, that
made the mission such a success. Let that be how we remember Neil Armstrong,
who fifty years ago this week became the first man to land a craft on the
surface of the moon and then walk upon that ancient rock. July 20, 1969.
In some ways he was the last person
you’d want to pick to lead the most significant scientific endeavor of the 20th
century, of any century, and he was also the best man to choose. Neil Armstrong
was Ohio born, a small-town kid who idolized the Wright brothers and their invention
of the airplane. An Eagle Scout, he later became a Navy pilot, a test pilot,
and an aerospace engineer, one of those folks who back then always carried
around a slide rule in their pocket and a pencil tucked behind the ear.
Not one whom you might expect to be a
hero. Armstrong did not have the stereotypical swagger of a test pilot, nor the
good looks and easy confidence of his fellow astronaut John Glenn. He didn’t
like the spotlight, the media’s insatiable appetite for quotes and quips. Author
Norman Mailer, in a Life magazine story, described him as “wooden”. He was humble, often uncomfortable with the
accolades that would come his way. He was intensely private, a faithful husband
and Dad.
And he was an engineer.
The kind of person with a curious
mind, who works to create a checklist or a process for doing something and then
double checks it and triple checks it and tests it out, and hones it, to make
it even better, and then, maybe, just maybe, then: it’s ready to go. So,
Armstrong was the perfect person to lead the Apollo 11 mission, the most
complex technological endeavor ever attempted by any civilization. It was the
culmination of a seven-year race to get to the moon and beat the Soviet Union
there. It cost $150 billion in today’s dollars, and at its peak it depended
upon the work of more than 600,000 Americans.
On that summer Sunday afternoon fifty
years ago, at 4:17 pm Eastern Standard Time, when the Eagle, as the lunar
lander was called, touched down on the moon, the whole world watched. The
landing attracted a global audience of almost 600 million people, including one
wide eyed eight-year old boy in Quincy, Massachusetts, who was (and still is)
enthralled by all that happened that day, oh so long ago. It even united a
nation, at least for one brief moment, a country torn apart by an unpopular war,
an unpopular President, political assassinations, and deep fear about how fast
the world and culture was changing.
A half a century later most folks
now alive have no memory of this amazing achievement, know of it only through pictures
in science textbooks, or movies like 2018’s “First Man”, that tells Armstrong’s
story, or maybe they hear about it from witnesses like me. Yes, I’m tempted to
wax nostalgic about it all, maybe even make Armstrong and his fellow astronauts
Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into secular saints.
But here’s the real miracle: human
beings took their God-given knowledge—of astronomy and engineering and rocketry
and physics and geology—and then dedicated this wisdom to one bold act. To
ensure that the only known sentient beings in all of the known universe were
the first to leave their own planet and land on an alien world and return home.
And it all happened under the
leadership of Armstrong, a quiet mid-western soul, an engineer who just did the
work, always, the precise and endless and careful and meticulous and
disciplined work. No tweets or selfies necessary. It’s refreshing to remember his
example in a time when so many of our cultural, social and political leaders
are more about self than country, more about style than substance, and more
about “me” than “we”.
This week take a walk outside at
night and look up into the sky at the moon, our beautiful and mysterious moon. Imagine this: a half century ago humankind
traveled there and back. Wow.
Thanks Neil.
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