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How to Step Away
We didn’t know him. We didn’t have to. We knew all we needed to know: his name was Neil Armstrong, he flew to the Moon, and he put a human print on the surface of another celestial body. The act was so audacious, so revelatory of mankind’s potential, that the usual machinery of pop-culture celebrity seemed abashed: this one gets a pass. This one stands apart. When you heard he died you may have struggled to call up the face, and all you got was a publicity photo of an ordinary fellow with a Rotarian grin. He was as remote and unreachable as the moon itself. That was okay with Neil; that was okay with everyone else, too.
He’s remembered for one thing, but he had a life before, and a life afterwards. The latter is more fascinating. How does a man incorporate such an accomplishment into his life? When does he start defining himself by something else? He had the life we all have: birthdays, toothaches, haircuts, oil changes. But when he looked up at night he saw something in the sky that had shone down on humanity from cave-age to yesterday, and he knew his relationship with Luna would always be unique. No one else would ever be first.
None of which matters when you’re on your hands and knees looking for your fingertip.
One day on his farm in 1979 he jumped off the back of his truck – you know he didn’t think heh, one small leap, because this was the farm, this was work – and his ring caught on a wheel. Ripped off part of his finger. He found it, eventually. Packed it in ice, drove to the hospital, had it put back on. When you come down to it, the hand is something NASA might develop: multiple redundancy – but I’m reasonably sure he wasn’t thinking “I used that finger to guide the Eagle to a safe landing spot.” It was bleeding. It hurt.
He was just a man on a farm, and these things happen.
Tales like that make him sound like the Celestial Cincinnatus: the hero who returned to his plow. But that’s what he was. He took a desk job at NASA, then taught engineering to college students. From a distance, it seems as if he understood perfectly that nothing in his life would equal that achievement. Nothing could. No one expected anything more. He could have debased his fame with a publicity tour or endorsements for Blast-Off Cola (That’s one big sip for a man, one giant gulp for thirstkind!), guest-starred on the $100,000 Pyramid, made a nice chunk and lived a life of conspicuous leisure – but he just stepped out of the spotlight at the earliest decent opportunity.
I heard a BBC report on his death, and I hoped they started with “Fly Me to the Moon.” or some other piece of grown-up music. What I heard used Thunderclap Newman’s “Something in the Air,” an interminable piece of simpering hippy tripe sung in a helium voice, because it was 1969, man. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and all that. As if the world was suddenly united. As if people back home weren’t rolling their eyes and complaining about the cost.
Sorry: they don’t get to claim Neil Armstrong. They don’t get to own the Moon Shot. The effort to put a man on the moon was everything the counterculture 60s repudiated: technology, military skill, national pride, American optimism, the sense that the Frontier has to be conquered so we can find a new one, and go there too. Neil Armstrong offered in jest to be the first man to walk on Mars, as well. Buzz Aldrin has been pushing a Mars jaunt for years. If the space program had kept up its pace and sent a team to Mars in the 90s, of course they wouldn’t have sent Neil and Buzz, but if they had, you can imagine Neil Armstrong holding the door for his co-pilot. I’ve had mine. You first.
He seemed like that sort of man.
Published in General
I’m not 100% sure that’s accurate. I have a hard time believing that it was pure chance that one of the only non-military astronauts “just happened” to be the one.
I read somewhere that shortly before launch all three crew members of Apollo 11 were told that in the event of an abort at any stage of the mission, they would bump the next crew and get to fly again. NASA didn’t want them to have any hesitatation over pulling that abort handle if needed.
I’m not 100% sure that’s accurate. I have a hard time believing that it was pure chance that one of the only non-military astronauts “just happened” to be the one.
Actually, Gus Grissom was the one chosen, but he was killed in Apollo 1.
There was some drama from the ever dramatic Buzz Aldrin who got his mommy and daddy to lobby for him to be the first one out of the LEM and step on the moon. The official story from NASA is that Neil was closer to the door, so he would go first, but the real reason from NASA insiders is that they didn’t think Buzz would be a dignified first man on the moon. Good choice, I say. Buzz has been a bit of an attention hound, and a recovering alcoholic. I’m glad they chose Neil.
Now that’s an example of how you put your brain to your keyboard.
Well said, James.
Honey. You just delighted me with this fine eulogy to Neil Armstrong. Really. Made me proud again. Made me remember those glory days. Made him human, but bigger. He was like so many humble American heroes who sacrificed and dared and made this country great.
Yeah. The Right Stuff.
Wonderful remembrance, James. What a very thoughtful homage to our modest hero. I have to add, though, that no one zings quite like you. These remarks hit their targets so perfectly. Bullseye!
Sorry: they don’t get to claim Neil Armstrong. They don’t get to own the Moon Shot. The effort to put a man on the moon was everything the counterculture 60s repudiated: technology, military skill, national pride, American optimism, the sense that the Frontier has to be conquered so we can find a new one, and go there too.
“He was always careful to say that he wasn’t chosen to be the guy to land on the moon. It just worked out that way”
No, it didn’t ‘just work out that way’ NASA didn’t jus blindly throw a dart that randomly landed on Armstrong’s name. Neil was already a Navy test pilot and you didn’t get there just by fogging a mirror either. Among other things, Neil flew 78 missions over Korea.
Neil had to put in for it. He had to qualify. He had to beat out his colleagues in a fierce competition for a few slots.
He may have been humble, but it din’t ‘just work out that way’.
Mr. Lileks has distilled my objection to being called a “Boomer” down to its essence. Yes, I was born between 1946 and 1964. No, I was not part of the ‘counterculture’ ‘revolutionary’ bunch of dropouts, freaks, and New Left wonks who were always drawing moral equivalences between the space program and every dependency-generating social program on the calendar (“we could have eliminated poverty with the money we spent going to the moon!”).
That these same people today are issuing appreciations of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 Moon landing smacks of the historical revisionism of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’sNineteen Eighty-Four .
I’m an aerospace honk, I’ve read a lot of what’s out there on Astronaut Armstrong’s passing, and Mr. Lilek’s take is the best. It should be on the reading list of every conservative and traditionalist in the Western world. The counterculture of 1969 is now in charge and as a result NASA suffers from “mission creep”, to put it mildly.