Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight

by Jay Barbree

  An hour after landing from his nine-day spaceflight, Chief Astronaut Charlie Precourt and NASA Administrator Dan Goldin match John Glenn stride for stride for his crew walkaround inspection. (NASA)

  * * *

  But in spite of the joy John Glenn’s second flight brought him, the last decade of the twentieth century wasn’t without its unhappiness. Neil spent most of it with family when all wasn’t well between him and Janet. They’d grown apart, and on April 2, 1994, his wife of nearly four decades divorced him. For five years he was lost until he met and married Carol Knight, a widow. They set up housekeeping in the Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill.

  About the only thing Neil ever said to me about Carol was he knew he wasn’t in her league. She has a smile as wide as Ohio and warmth as big as Texas. No person ever met Carol that didn’t like and appreciate this beautiful addition to our species.

  Carol and Neil were introduced and taken to dinner by mutual friends. Neil being Neil took his own sweet time getting back to Carol. Hell, he’d decided to propose to Janet two years before he asked. When it came to Carol, he kept asking himself why this magnificent woman would be interested in an old worn-out pilot like me.

  He could not come up with a plausible answer, but he couldn’t forget her, either. He finally phoned. Quietly he said, “Hello, this is Neil.”

  “Neil, who,” she answered in a rush.

  Embarrassed, Neil reminded her who he was. She immediately told him she and her son were having trouble cutting a tree down in their backyard and she didn’t have time to talk. Neil, realizing he could be a hero to the rescue, spoke up excitedly saying, “I can take care of that.”

  Carol rushed her good-bye and ran back to the job at hand.

  Only minutes had passed when there was a ring at Carol’s door. Her son answered, only to run back to his mother, shouting, “Mom, you’re not going to believe who’s at the front door with a chain saw.”

  Neil immediately sensed the teen’s reaction had something to do with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Carol had not told her son she and Neil had been to dinner with friends and that he was coming over to help with the tree.

  * * *

  Carol and Neil would have 14 years together during which the century turned, and Neil was glad to see construction was moving ahead on the International Space Station.

  The orbiting outpost was to be as large as two football fields set side by side. But on February 1, 2003, construction stopped. The space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven were lost, again to an aura of what might best be called arrogant complacency.

  The flight by the oldest member of the shuttle fleet had nothing to do with the space station. It was in its own orbit for 16 days where it could have only been seen by national security assets. Had it docked with the space station, or had those in charge of its flight decided to look, the hole in its right wing surely would have been detected. The hole got there during its launch when insulation cascaded from the Columbia’s external fuel tank and ripped the hole in its right wing.

  While in orbit, an overconfident NASA failed to inspect the ship following questions raised from viewing launch video. When the oldest shuttle and its seven returned to Earth, reentry heat devoured the space plane and breached a wing. Columbia and its astronauts disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana while penetrating Earth’s atmosphere.

  Neil was again devastated.

  The Columbia Accident Investigation Board recommended the space shuttle fleet be grounded following completion of the International Space Station. Neil and a disheartened space family watched the space shuttles become museum pieces.

  NASA was virtually dismantled because of a lack of interest and indecisive leadership. Neil joined the last man on the moon Gene Cernan and Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell in writing an op-ed on the drifting space agency. The three Apollo astronauts saw fit to give their op-ed to me; Brian Williams broke the editorial on his number one news program, NBC Nightly News.

  Neil, Jim Lovell, and Gene Cernan traveled the planet preaching what we must do if Earth and its miracle of life are to survive.

  * * *

  During this period, as Buzz Aldrin neared his eightieth birthday, Neil’s partner on the moon was approached by a six-foot-something, obnoxious conspiracy theorist. This clown didn’t believe Aldrin had walked on the moon. The jerk got right into Buzz’s face with a microphone and camera. He shouted, “You are the one who said you walked on the moon and you didn’t. Talk about the kettle calling the pot black.”

  “Will you get away from me?” Buzz asked not so politely.

  “You are a coward, a liar, and a thief,” the harasser shouted.

  Having to reach up, Buzz threw a swift punch startling and sending the guy backward. The idiot called to his cameraman, “Did you get that? Did you see what he did? Did you get that?”

  Those watching laughed as the conspiracy theorist ran, clearly identifying who the coward really was.

  Soon Buzz’s astronaut buddies like Wally Schirra began calling Aldrin “Rocky.” When that same idiot approached Neil asking him to swear on a Bible he was holding that he walked on the moon, Neil smiled pleasantly. “I would, but I’m sure like you your Bible is a fake.”

  A couple of working scientists on Discovery Television’s MythBusters took the conspiracy theorist’s so-called evidence, and with scientific tests debunked the theorists’ claims.

  In July 2009, NASA’s first lunar scout for the twenty-first century, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, took images of the Eagle’s lunar module descent stage where Neil and Buzz left it on the Sea of Tranquility.

  Apollo 14’s landing area showed the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter a faint trail of Alan Shepard’s and Edgar Mitchell’s two-mile round-trip walk to Cone Crater. You can see clearly where they pulled their “rickshaw” tool and collection carrier. Apollo 17’s picture is so detailed experts can tell which way the wheels were pointing on Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt’s lunar rover.

  Apollo 11: Eagle and experiments still sit where Neil and Buzz left them. (NASA)

  Following these pictures 40 years later, the conspiracy theorists were left with one claim: The United States Congress and President Barack Obama approved $200 billion for NASA to build and fly the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to fake these pictures.

  Apollo 12’s lunar module descent stage along with Conrad’s and Bean’s footprints are still there. (NASA)

  Apollo 14: Rickshaw tracks, lander, and experiments left by Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell are clearly seen. (NASA)

  Apollo 15: First lunar rover tracks are clear as is the lunar rover where Dave Scott and Jim Irwin left it. (NASA)

  This reporter covered every mission flown by American astronauts for NBC News. We broke the cause of the Apollo 1 launchpad fire that killed three as well as the cause of the Challenger accident that killed seven. If NASA had convinced 400,000 Apollo workers to lie and if the agency had slipped their fraud by the Russians, the British, and the Chinese who were tracking America’s nine trips to the moon, I promise you the agency would have never gotten a lie by me nine times. Why wouldn’t NASA stop after succeeding once? Why would they risk getting caught lying another eight times?

  More important: Did NASA lie about the Apollo 1 launchpad fire? Did the United States of America kill three of its astronauts just so it could create a falsehood about placing astronauts on the moon? Only an idiot could believe that.

  Apollo 16: Lunar rover is parked where it was left by John Young and Charlie Duke, to the right of the lunar lander. (NASA)

  * * *

  Sad but true: Neil Armstrong spent his last days disappointed that America’s space program had been abandoned.

  He contributed wholeheartedly to five stories we wrote for NBCNews.com entitled “Space in the 20Teens.” The last of the features ran only a month before Neil left us. He died August 25, 2012, following complications from heart bypass surgery.

  Apollo 17: We see it all. The parked moon buggy, the experiments, the
lander, and the tracks left by Harrison Schmitt and the mission’s commander Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk the lunar landscape. (NASA)

  No greater man walked among us. No better man left us informed answers. Neil taught us how to take care of our Earth-Moon system.

  His thoughts are next.

  The Hubble Space Telescope in orbit, cataloging the universe. (NASA)

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THEN, NOW, AND TOMORROW

  First, there was nothing.

  Then, 13.82 billion years ago the universe simply burst into existence, a “singularity”—a huge release of energy that would be called the Big Bang. It happened in total darkness because light didn’t yet exist—even stranger, neither did space.

  Today, the Big Bang is accepted. Most astronomers and scientists believe it was just a very tiny ultra-hot particle of energy before exploding in the greatest of all explosions; it expanded, inflated into existence, getting bigger and cooler with each passing moment. It created matter in the form of countless trillions of subatomic particles—the first stuff there ever was. Then it cooled! The fog cleared around 400,000 years following the Big Bang and the universe became visible. It was no longer a cloud of gas. Galaxies and quasars began forming in single points of light—uncountable billions of them spreading a vast web in every direction.

  That evolution of our universe continues today.

  Hubble’s deep-field distant galaxies. (Hubble and NASA)

  The first suggestion that the unimaginable explosion occurred was by a decorated World War I artillery officer, ordained a Jesuit Belgian priest in 1923. His name was Georges Lemaître. He met with the pope of his time, Pius XII, and convinced him not to talk about creation any more. Lemaître felt strongly that one should not mix science and religion. He told the pope, “As far as I can see such a theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being. For the believer, it removes any attempt at familiarity with God. It is consonant with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in the beginning of the universe.”

  The pope agreed.

  Lemaître referred to the “singularity” as a “cosmic egg” exploding at the moment of creation. He published in 1927 what scientists now call the Hubble Constant, which tells us how fast the universe is expanding. Later, Sir Fred Hoyle, an English astronomer known for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, coined the Big Bang, originally a pejorative term. Hoyle believed in a static universe. Lemaître received a Ph.D. from MIT, and met with Einstein a number of times. Einstein originally agreed with the mathematics but not Lemaître’s physics. Later the formulator of the theories of relativity called his rejection of the idea of an expanding universe, “the greatest mistake I ever made.” At a meeting in Princeton in 1935, Einstein generated standing applause for Lemaître, referring to his work as “the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.”

  The universe’s age of 13.82 billion years was determined in recent years by satellite measurements of the cosmic microwave background. These measurements also detected thermal residue of the Big Bang, making Lemaître’s theory even more credible.

  Neil Armstrong, as did most, questioned what prompted the singularity; where did the smallest of energy particles come from? Not that Professor Armstrong necessarily disagreed with accepted theory. He had questions. He just wanted to know if the singularity was simply an accident, or an act of some great force of nature, or if a supreme being orchestrated that big bang.

  As of this writing no one will or can answer Professor Armstrong’s basic question.

  * * *

  In his never-ending research Neil found that nine billion years after the “singularity,” when galaxies were being born and billions of stars were burning themselves into dead matter, an ancient star had exploded. It littered our Milky Way Galaxy about 26,000 light years from its center with whirling clouds of the materials it had made while it lived.

  This photo of Nebula NGC 6302, the Butterfly, is an example of how our own solar system was born. (Hubble and NASA)

  These whirling clouds of dust are called nebulae. They are very beautiful. But this one was different. It was the nebulae that gave birth to our solar system. It was nitrogen and oxygen and iron, and then the tireless forces of gravity pulled it all back together—the heavy engineering that produces planets had begun.

  Vast spirals of dust gathered. At the center of one of these spirals a rocky planet that would be called Earth was taking shape. It was built from stardust and assembled by gravity. Within 100 million years it had grown into a giant ball sweeping up billions of tons of celestial materials. And at the heart of our nebula the pressure and temperature of this ball of hydrogen gas had become so great that the atoms were beginning to fuse. A new star, our sun, was coming to life.

  As our sun ignited it gave off a huge blast of solar wind—a gust of energy that blew all the remaining dust and gas left over from the nebula out to the edge of our solar system.

  In the outer reaches the huge gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune took up their orbits. Farther in—denser, rocky planets were fighting to survive.

  There were about twenty and when there was nothing more to sustain them, things got nasty. They orbited the sun, their gravity affected each other, and they began to collide. With each collision they devoured one another, and over time the twenty became four: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

  Neil’s research suggested Earth consumed about ten of its neighbors. The results were an incredibly hot planet—about 8,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Had there been any living thing on Earth then it would have disappeared in an instant—just a brief puff of steam and ash.

  So it appeared all life had to do was wait for Earth to cool. Then 50 to 150 million years after its birth it seemed our young world had things under control. But it didn’t. From deep within the solar system a large planetoid was headed Earth’s way. It was on a collision course and it was unbelievably massive—possibly the size of Mars itself.

  Had there been humans on Earth then they would have spotted this intruder millions of miles out. They would have watched it grow in size night after night. Soon it would have filled the sky. There would have been no escape, no reprieve. Instantly they would have been staring doom in its face as—at an oblique angle—the planetoid squashed the young Earth.

  Our virgin planet reeled violently from that catastrophic blow. The planetoid exploded into the hottest of hot debris as it gouged a terrible, great wound in Earth—its mighty fires speeding on, leaving behind a flaming, quake-wracked planet. The mixed remnants of that titanic blast whirled back into space, there to be grabbed by Earth’s gravity.

  Most of the heaviest elements from the planetoid, especially its iron, remained with the now-molten Earth, beginning a long settling motion to the core of our world-to-be. As Earth cooled, it became a planet much different from the one it had been before the collision. Like Mercury and Venus without their moons, Earth had rotated sluggishly. But that terrible impact sped up our planet to one full rotation every 24 hours.

  Again a harvest had been reaped. The flaming, vaporized planetoid hurled away from Earth, now settled into orbit. In the billions of years to follow it coalesced under its own gravitational attraction into the moon we see today.

  * * *

  Modern humans appeared on Earth about 200,000 years ago. Soon our ancestors were out of their deep African Eden, moving about, exploring, wondering where the moon came from. Then in the middle of the seventeenth century, Galileo and other astronomers fashioned crude telescopes and clearly saw on the lunar surface bright highlands and darker plains with endless overlapping craters.

  Earth’s great universities joined the telescopic studies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Then, like neighbors everywhere, a lunar visit in the twentieth century seemed the neighborly thing to do.

  Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
were first to land and walk on the moon. Within a period of four years, 24 Americans had visited our nearest neighbor. Some of them flew twice. Half of those 24 rode their landers down to the lunar landscape where they walked and drove on that small world.

  Had Russia sustained its early lead the number of humans going to the moon might have increased greatly.

  The Apollo trips alone leapedfrogged humans 50 years ahead in science and knowledge. But what most astounded Neil was not that we went to the moon, but that we didn’t stay.

  * * *

  At this writing it appears at least one half-century will have passed before humans leave Earth orbit again. In Neil Armstrong’s words, “I find that mystifying. It’s as if sixteenth-century monarchs proclaimed that ‘we need not to go to the New World again, we have already been there.’”

  Neil spent his last years convincing our species of the importance of exploring.

  He was guided by one absolute.

  From the moment he read the words written in the nineteenth century by the Russian visionary Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, Neil had a clear understanding of where humankind should be going.

  Tsiolkovsky is credited as being the first to envision the concept of using rockets for space travel. In a simple elegant use of language, the Russian scientist/schoolteacher saw the future, saw what humans must do and where they must go if they were to survive.

  “Earth is the cradle of the mind,” wrote this self-taught man reaching for tomorrow, “but one cannot live in the cradle forever.”

  Tsiolkovsky’s words became part of Neil and he never felt their meaning more strongly than when he first left the cradle and enjoyed the freedom of sustained weightlessness aboard Gemini 8. Neil had marveled at those moments moving over oceans and seas with their surface glassy and undisturbed. He happily recalled seeing a shining streak, a single wirelike gleam of sunlight reflecting off a long, straight railroad track running through green fields and vast tracts of farmland for miles. Awed, he saw cities that were dark patches, huge rivers that were, from Neil’s vantage, sparkling ribbons winding through the countryside.