Thread: Neil Armstrong Dead at 82

Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, dead at 82 | World | News | National Post

Kind of surprised that nobody has commented yet...

The moon landing is a major pinnacle of human achievement -- it's of course an American achievement, but it's also a global one. Armstrong was able to walk on the moon because Newton figured out Calculus and the Chinese figured out rocketry and the Germans perfected it and the Arab world figured out algebra and chemistry. All of that converged in a pretty amazing way when we launched someone hundreds of thousands of miles through space onto another world.

Also relevant: xkcd: 65 Years

The death of a historical figure is truly devastating. Without him and the other astronauts, we would've lost the space race.

It was saddening to hear this earlier. My little brother is pretty big into aerospace and rocket science so he was the first to hear about and very devastated. He made one of the biggest achievements of modern times. He and the rest of the Apollo 11 crew dared to do what people thought was impossible. He stepped into an unknown territory miles away from home and made our first steps onto the moon. My dad was very young when Apollo 11 landed on the moon and has shared the story with me and I was pretty amazed the first time hearing it.
R.I.P Mr. Armstrong.

I feel this quote is appropriate:

To infinity, and beyond

My entire first grade class wrote to Armstrong back in 1994. The school did a "hero/ shero" thing that year where each class studied a different historical figure and reported about them on the morning announcements. He was our guy. The first time I ever spoke on a public address system was when I read about Armstrong and Apollo 11 off of an index card for our class. The teacher sprung the letter writing thing on us pretty quickly. I remember that my letter to him was really stupid, but hey, what's a 6-year old to do.

He wrote back, and they read it aloud to the whole school. I still consider my first grade class writing to Neil Armstrong as one of the most epic moments of my elementary school (and possibly K-12) career.

My mother remembers watching the landing on a crummy TV in my grandparents' living room.

RIP Mr. Armstrong, and I apologize for being cheesy in that letter.

This is really sad. First Sally Ride, and now Neil Armstrong... so many childhood heroes for us space geeks are leaving us!

I'm not really sure what to say but that as a kid I often dreamed of going into space, particularly of being able to travel to the moon or another planet. Neil Armstrong was one of the people who made that possible. RIP to a great man.

See You Space Cowboy.....

I feel like pretty much every time an important person dies or is in the news, there's a post about a bunch of stupid teens on Tumblr who don't know who s/he is, but some of these are particularly sad.

(although from looking at their twitters out of curiosity, I'm pretty sure the first person was joking and the last one is a troll)

For the man who walked on the moon, rest in peace.

Certainly not a good week for the Armstrong brothers.

Well he lived an exciting life and a forfilled one. He did well and america is making a big deal about him being a hero to their counrty, but the heroism is more worldwide I think.

R.I.P Armstrong

In 82 years, he certainly didn't waste any of them. One of the most influential people in shaping our victory in the space race. RIP, he was a true legend.