
Neil Armstrong, Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman - sp332
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/08/neil-armstrong.html
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dag11
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 historic first steps.

Note: I'm not trying to make a comment phrased as a question here. It's truly
a question.

~~~
cstross
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>

And pay attention to the stuff _before_ Apollo 11.

~~~
angstrom
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.

