I am amazed how limited the reaction to Armstrong’s death has been. I really expected something much bigger.
And also a bit :rolleyes: at many of the news reports which seem to start off “Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon…” - who the hell doesn’t know who Neil Armstrong is?
Who doesn’t know? Twitter abounds with people who don’t know. He landed in 1969, that’s old-folks’ stuff, didn’t you know?
I’m 25. I have a twitter account. It’s not like finding out who Perry Como was (something I only discovered the other week). He landed on the fucking moon!
Wait, humans walked on the moon? When did that happen?
I’m messing with you, but the reality is that there are people that don’t know some of the most basic historical facts. That it means anything at all to anybody 43 years later requires an interest that a lot of people don’t seem to have. There are thousands of people that are sad today because Neil Armstrong died just days after losing his Tour de France titles. Never discount the blatant idiocy of people.
The reaction is about what I expected. I’m not even a baby boomer and I was crestfallen over the news.
But a lot of my personal heros are scientists, astronaunts, explorers, or anyone who pushes the envelope in human knowledge and discovery.
The rest of the population, say… Oh 90%… looks to athletes or celebrities. Pity.
If someone older than 4 years old didn’t know who Neil Armstrong was, I’d think they were living on the moon or something.
The first guy to walk on the moon should at least get as much attention as a dead pop star.
Er, come to think of it… he’s probably better off without the media vultures that usually descend to feed on celebrity dead bodies. Yeah, nice, quiet, dignified.
Live Strong™
Why would you *not *include the thing he is most famous for in the first sentence of the obit/story about his death? That’s just how it works.
During an English lesson with a class of 10-11 year olds recently, I asked them if the knew the name of the astronauts involved in Apollo 11. Most put up their hands.
I was impressed, as their knowledge of recent history is quite weak (to be fair they don’t really study recent history a great deal in primary school except for the units on Britain post-1945 and the Second World War).
he wanted to go to the moon.
Are you saying he didn’t? I guess it’s because I move in a circle of friends who are (a) older (40+ in general) and (b) typically scientifically minded, but I found out about his passing through Facebook updates on my phone while at a baseball game when a flood of RIPs came up on my feed.
I can think of worse ways to be remembered than “first man on the Moon”.
The main thing I think whenever I hear Neil Armstrong’s name is how unfair it is that he gets so much more recognition than poor Buzz. I mean, one of them had to be first, but really being a few seconds or minutes or whatever behind shouldn’t matter. I wonder how they decided who got to be first.
Anyway to me it’s not a big deal that he died. The moon landing was before my time so it was never an event to me, it was just the way things always were. It’s an amazing thing to think about, but he died because he was old, it’s not like he died of moon sickness. Now that would be interesting.
Arguably they did arrive on the moon simultaneously, Neil just got out of the vehicle first.
I’m having a hard time coming up with anybody else whose death made front-page news recently when they hadn’t previously been in the news for over 40 years.
I was at a Paul and Storm show last night, and they stepped away from their funny stuff to sing Rocket Man as a tribute to Neil Armstrong. I thought it was wonderful.
There are a few stories about his death in my Google News feed, but the news is getting drowned out by Hurricane Isaac at the moment. I guess that’s just how it goes. I’m a little surprised I’m not seeing more about it on my Facebook feed, considering how many space geeks I count among my friends.
I was pleasantly surprised at the response to Armstrong’s death. People still react strongly to the space program and moon walker.
According to this website, it appears to be a combination of two things. Number one, seniority. Armstrong was the senior astronaut. Number two, the lunar module hatch swung in such a way that it penned Aldrin in, making Armstrong the natural choice from a purely practical standpoint.
It was also easier for someone in his position to get out first (see myth #2).
He wasn’t just the first guy to step onto the moon. He was a Navy pilot, flew numerous missions in the Korean War, flew many dangerous test pilot missions and had a number of near-accidents. Those early test pilots quite literally risked their lives to advance aeronautics and then the space program.
I was born a couple days short of a year after the Moon landing. As various childhood hood entertainers have died over the years (Mr. Rogers, Jim Henson, etc.), I have occasionally said it felt like my childhood was dying too, or at least those who molded it.
Neil Armstrong’s loss feels like we lost someone who helped shape not our childhoods, but our dreams for the future. The space race pointed at a golden tomorrow, and except for depositing another little robot on Mars (which is still goddamned awesome, mind you), we’re actually going backwards in our space explorations in terms of where humans are going. Our shuttle program is shut down. We haven’t returned to the Moon.
Armstrong was a hero, both literally and symbolically, and we are losing those of this world who have ever stepped foot on another celestial body, one by one.
Edit: Dammit, typed too slowly.
For those of us who lived through the time, it was heartbreaking to lose him before we even have a clue of when do we return to the Moon or even when the US will have its own manned vehicle flying again. We may have even cried privately, BUT his age made it so that it could have been any day now so we cannot be shocked, and it was a full and good life.
He had already become a figure of history even while alive. And since the man strongly shunned the trappings of celebrity cult, it is not surprising if there are no screaming crowds rending their garments and pouring Tang on their hair in the middle of Main Street. His life is celebrated, and his passing mourned, with appropriate dignity by those who care and appreciate.
I’ll let later generations wallow in Recreational Grief and stop all broadcasts to have to-the-second updates from first 911 call to reading of the Will for pop celebrities, if that’s what they’re into.