One last step for a man. One giant loss for mankind.

Neil Armstrong has passed away at age 82.

....wow. I'm at a loss for words

linky for more info.

i've only met one of the astronauts who walked on the moon. Sadly it wasn't Neil. i just hope one day humans will travel even farther than he did. To me that's the ideal way to honor his accomplishments.

I was just a seven years old when I watched Walter Cronkite broadcast the historic event. Neil will never leave us, he will always be in our hearts.

This is not only a sad day because we lost a great man, but it also illustrates how backward the space program has become. When the first man on the Moon dies at 82 and we're all still stuck on this rock with stone age space technology and not colonizing Mars and mining the Asteroid Belt, you know something went wrong somewhere.

RIP to a great man.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schismatrix i just hope one day humans will travel even farther than he did. To me that's the ideal way to honor his accomplishments.

Very much my own sentiments. It's sad that humanity has never set foot on a world further away than Neil Armstrong did in 1969. And we haven't gone even that far in what will soon be 40 years.

The man who saved the Eagle with ice-water calm demonstrated he was only human with the greatest blown line reading in history. Which made me admire him even more.

Rest in Peace, spaceman.

RIP.

RIP. A true hero.

A great loss and a true hero. I remember watching being woken up by my parents to watch him on our B+W TV take those first few steps on the Moon.

I honestly expected we (mankind) would have some kind of active presence there by now, even if it nothing more than a remote radio telescope listening to the universe, outside of all the chatter of our planet.

I think to myself, why is there no statue to honor the accomplishment of Mr. Armstrong? And then I realize that there is no statue large enough to sufficiently capture the magnitude or importance of what Neil Armstrong did. In ten thousand years of human history, he is the first human ever to set foot upon a world that was not Earth.

You want to see the memorial honoring him? Look up at the night sky.

You want to know how to properly honor him? Walk in his steps... and then keep walking.

He has to be the luckiest person in the world. He was officially the first person to walk on the moon. The only people luckier than him would be the first person to walk on another planet, the first person to walk on another planet in another solar system, the first person to walk on another planet in another galaxy, and the first person to walk on another planet in another dimension. I figure by the end of this century, someone will walk on Mars and in a few hundred years someone should walk on another planet in another solar system or at least the mission will launch for it. The other two are highly unlikely to ever occur.

It's rare (and happy!) that I realize that there are people older than I playing this game.


It is also rare the a true hero passes, regardless of nationality/affiliations.


RIP

We might have accomplished the feat at a later date, but it was the Soviets that gave us the inspiration/determination to race to the Moon. We have no such motivation now, which is why the Space Program is what it is at the moment. If we're going to put someone on Mars, or beyond, we need sufficient motivation to do so.

The Final Frontier seems much further away now, though it seems to me that the biggest hurdle to further exploration of space is not in a lack of funds, personnel, or material, but in the simple lack of idealism to guide it.