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He was the chosen one, but can someone inform me of the major achievements he himself did? As far as I know, many others could have been chosen to make the hist

• sp332 14y ago
  "I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work." - Neil Armstrong He actually did a ton of other stuff, and was constantly annoyed that everyone ignored it and only ever talked about his moon mission.
  • evilduck 14y ago
    This was one of my calculus teachers in college, around 2006: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/akers.html http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/akers.html For the skimmers, he was on the Hubble repair mission and held the record for the longest space walk until very recently I believe. Astronaut aside, he was a very friendly and approachable "good ol' boy", he was an excellent teacher, he was a math major in college himself, he was a principal at a rural school district before joining the military, and in the military did math/physics for missile guidance systems. I don't think you'd find anyone more convincing about the practicality and need of calculating vectors in three dimensions than someone who was plotting missile trajectories for a living. He had great practical examples for the calculus principles being taught. Understandably every student, myself included, always wanted to know more about his previous career before teaching us calculus since it's not every day you meet an astronaut, and you're a little star-struck (no pun intended) when you've got such direct access to the guy. So to prevent distracting, time consuming and calculus-irrelevant questions during classes he'd set up an Q&A session one night each semester outside class and settle the curiosities. You could kind of tell he didn't really enjoy it, but felt obligated to do it because astronauts are public figures and kind of have to oblige the public a bit, and because it was better than his classes being distracted by it all semester. The one thing that he said that stuck with me was that since it had been >10 years since he had been with NASA was that his memory of his tasks in space have been blurred from having retold the stories so many times. The actions and the stories have become separate in his mind.
• tmhedberg 14y ago
  Among other things, he managed to land Eagle with only seconds of fuel remaining, having manually maneuvered it to an alternative landing site after the computer had navigated to a primarly landing area covered with boulders. All this while several unexpected computer alarms were going off. Maybe others could have done that as well, but Armstrong actually did it, staying calm under unimaginable pressure and averting disaster.
  • loboman 14y ago
    Ok, question. How do you develop the skill of keeping calm under that kind of pressure? I get stressed for the silliest things, I'm sure there is a way to fix that.
    • Numberwang 14y ago
      You manage it by being experienced in what you are doing, ironically.
      • ufo 14y ago
        Precisely. They extensively tested all sorts of catastrophical scenarios back on the simulators on earth.
    • Lost_BiomedE 14y ago
      I am not sure on developing it, but I am good in crisis and can describe what goes through my mind. A problem is realized. A sense of urgency develops. Assessing as fast as possible the severity, the higher the severity the less assessment needs to be done vs. moving to solving and acting. Look for the root cause of the problem vs. effects and think of two or three routes of action, quickly. Think ~two logical steps down each route to rule out obviously bad actions. Then go with the one that is the simplest/quickest or has the best gut feeling (feeling of rightness). React. The main thing for me, is when I get that sense of urgency, all self-concerns and distracting thoughts fall away to the process above. It is a directed panic on the inside, but to the outside observer, it looks calm and methodological. When I get to the react part, it is all I concentrate on. Panic drops for something like intense focus. I don't know if this will help, but maybe doing similar processes for little emergencies will train your reactions for larger ones.
• kisstheblade 14y ago
  Gotta agree. But people apparently need a Hero and hero worship to get exited about things (ie. funding). I bet there are thousands of people who would have been able and willing to do the same things as Neil, and who today would happily make a one way trip to Mars. Most people of course couldn't be bothered to get off their couch, so these people (eg. asttronauts) of course get my respect for pushing the envelope.
  • kbutler 14y ago
    There's a huge difference between "able and willing to do them" and "did them."
  • natep 14y ago
    So, do you actually know anything about Neil's life, and are dismissing all of those accomplishments, or are you making that statement out of complete ignorance? He didn't pop out of a test tube and into the Eagle, and sure, lets say thousands of people were equally qualified. That's about 0.00002% of of the population, and puts him in the top 0.1% of the people that could have done what he did (i.e. he did it).
  • dag11 14y ago
    Agree with what? I made no statements and declared no opinions. I simply asked a question because I knew there was a lot to the man, and I wanted to learn more.
• caycep 14y ago
  There was a ton of engineering and test piloting that was accomplished on his part. You don't just ride Apollo up to the moon. And by all account, he was one of the most competent test pilots/aeronautical engineers in the program.
• ktizo 14y ago
  Well, it's true that he worked with many artists and that others were also revolutionising the comic book form around the same period, but Gaiman really captured some sort of zeitgeist with the sandman series that opened up the field for those who came after. Oh, you mean Armstrong. I think he just went to the moon and stuff.
• xsmasher 14y ago
  He was chosen, but not at random off of the street. This was an exclusive program that he earned his spot in. Beyond that there's the philosophical question. The tallest tree in the forest owes everything to genetics and environment. Is the same thing true for great men? I say yes, but that doesn't diminish his example for me. He was still a great man.
• cstross 14y ago
  He saved Gemini 8 from near-disaster due to a stuck thruster during the first ever US docking in space (with an Agena target satellite). He nursed an X-15 in after a test flight went wrong, setting a record along the way for the longest X-15 flight in the entire program (it bounced off the top of the stratosphere during re-entry and had to glide about a hundred miles further than normal to make the airfield). He was the LLTV test pilot -- the LLTV was the turbofan-powered test bed for the Lunar Excursion Module's descent control systems -- and survived an engine failure at low altitude, ejecting about 0.5 seconds before it became non-recoverable. His list of hair-raising flight test achievements is remarkable; he was basically the best test pilot in the astronaut program for making split-second decisions when the shit hit the fan, and he'd also been the test pilot for the lunar lander. Do you need any more? Start reading here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong And pay attention to the stuff before Apollo 11.
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  • angstrom 14y ago
    You left off the part where he also had the technical chops beyond just being a pilot he had a background in aeronautical engineering. He was lucky, smart and humble enough to know the difference between the two.
  • masklinn 14y ago
    And even his lunar landing, where he took manual control as the automated sequence was landing them in a boulderized crater side, and managed a landing in a safe place with 20~30s of fuel left
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