
Neil Armstrong's Code - areoform
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/space/armstrong1.htm
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areoform
I have spent more time than most thinking about Armstrong, Project Apollo and
his legacy in the long lens of history. This misunderstanding became much
clearer when the program ended and all of the Apollo astronauts faced an
existential crisis and a deep depression following their crowning achievement.
Their lives - the lives of some of the smartest and most driven people to ever
live - peaked in their 40's and that was it.

It's hard to imagine a different perception of Apollo than the one we have
right now, but at the time people realized it would be historic, but they
didn't grasp the magnitude of their achievement. This fact was especially true
for the astronauts involved. No one - not even NASA - realized the obvious at
the time; the astronauts were never going to be human beings after their moon
walks. They were going to be such and such who walked on the moon. And in a
way - in the eyes of history - every act following that point was essentially
a footnote. After all, how the heck do you top walking on the moon?

This burden was further magnified for Armstrong. Most of us forget the depth
of his fame. Carl Sagan wrote about an anecdote where an anthropologist told
him that a previously uncontacted tribe (or rather assumed to be uncontacted
tribe) asked about Apollo 11 and if it was true if human beings had indeed
walked on the moon. Try to put yourself in his shoes and lift the weight he
carried. Try to imagine being Neil Armstrong and waking up every single day
with the weight that _every_ literate child in the world will learn your name
until humanity itself ceases to be. He became The First Man - not a person who
was allowed to make mistakes. No, that was too undignified for The First Man.

And he hated every second of it. He refused to sign autographs. He stopped
going out into public. Stopped giving interviews. (IIRC, the last one he gave
was to an accountant
[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/neil-
ar...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/neil-armstrong-
grants-rare-interview-accountant/327730/)) And chose to live his life as a
recluse.

But perhaps, this tendency is why he was chosen in the first place. Deke
Slayton and the other administrators, wisely, knew that he would be a better
First Man than someone like Aldrin, who can be described in the most
charitable of terms as a fame whore.
[http://www.americaspace.com/?p=24709](http://www.americaspace.com/?p=24709)

And so one of the most shy and cerebral men of his generation was chosen to be
a "living monument." And perhaps a monument to the American era as a whole. As
of writing, Armstrong is already more famous than Alexander the Great - after
whom at least three major languages have literally defined the word "great."
(even now his name isn't Alexander of Macedonia, but Alexander _the_ Great.)
And Alexander himself will be forgotten before Armstrong is. He is without a
doubt, the most famous human to ever exist. And long after the American empire
ceases to be, he will still be remembered as an example of what we achieved.
Barring a calamity, he will be remembered for all time as long as human beings
are alive.

It was a very heavy burden, but Armstrong bore it with grace. Perhaps with
greater grace than Washington himself, who exemplified the ideal of doing your
service and saying goodbye to retire to a farm.

Beyond his technical mind. I am in awe of him as a human being. The more I
learn about him, the more I admire him.

