- 4596 - NEIL ARMSTRONG - first man on the moon. - On July 20, 1969, the American astronaut Neil Armstrong put his left foot on the lunar surface and famously declared, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
-----------------------
4596 - NEIL ARMSTRONG - first man on the moon.
-
- In the 50 years since then, according to
Armstrong biographer James R. Hansen, author of First Man: The Life of Neil A.
Armstrong, which inspired the 2018 film First Man, some think Neil Armstrong’s
famous quote is a riff on a line from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, in which the
author describes protagonist Bilbo Baggins becoming invisible and jumping over
the villain Gollum, “not a great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark.”
-
- And there is, in fact, an Armstrong-Tolkien
connection. After leaving NASA, Armstrong and his family moved to a farm in
Lebanon, Ohio, that he dubbed Rivendell, which is also the name of a valley and
the home of the half-elf, half-human Elrond, in Lord of the Rings. Armstrong also had Tolkien-themed email
address in the ’90s.
-
- However, when Hansen asked Armstrong to set
the record straight on that theory, the
Apollo 11 astronaut said he didn’t read Tolkien’s books until after the
Apollo 11 mission.
-
- Was the famous quote taken from a NASA
memo? Others have said Armstrong may
have been influenced by a April 19, 1969, memo he had seen from Willis Shapley,
an associate deputy administrator at NASA headquarters. “The intended overall
impression of the symbolic activities and of the manner in which they are
presented to the world should be to signalize the first lunar landing as an
historic step forward for all mankind that has been accomplished by the United
States of America,” he wrote. “The ‘forward step for all mankind’ aspect of the
landing should be symbolized primarily by a suitable inscription to be left on
the Moon and by statements made on Earth, and also perhaps by leaving on the
Moon miniature flags of all nations.”
- Armstrong, however, claimed he had no
recollection of the memo. The astronaut
told Hansen the line had no complicated origin story, and simply came to him in
the lead-up to the historic moment: “What can you say when you step off of
something? Well, something about a step. It just sort of evolved during the
period that I was doing the procedures of the practice takeoff and the EVA
[extravehicular activity] prep and all the other activities that were on our
flight schedule at that time.”
-
- Commander Neil Armstrong climbing down the
ladder of the Lunar Module (LM) the 'Eagle,' to become the first man to set
foot on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
Armstrong died on Aug. 25, 2012, at the age of 82
-
-
November 3, 2024 NEIL ARMSTRONG
- first man on the moon. 4596
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------- Comments appreciated and Pass it on to
whomever is interested. ---
--- Some reviews are at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email feedback, corrections, request for
copies or Index of all reviews
--- to:
------
jamesdetrick@comcast.net
------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Tuesday, November 5,
2024
---------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment