Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight (2014) is written by
Jay Barbree, NBC News Space Correspondent and longtime friend (since 1962) of
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. The book is touted as “the
intimate, definitive biography” of the quiet astronaut.
The book commences in 1951 with Neil Armstrong, at 21
years of age, on combat mission, leaving from the aircraft carrier Essex, and flying across the Sea of
Japan and over the mountains of North Korea. By 1956 Armstrong was a research
test pilot at Edwards NACA’s High Speed Flight Station, the forerunner of the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – but not before he married
Janet.
Barbree details the Space Race between the Russians
and the Americans, launch by launch. On October 4, 1957, Sergei Korolev, the
Soviet chief rocket scientist, watched his rocket R-7 and its satellite,
Sputnik 1, become the first rocket in space. A month later the Soviets launched
Sputnik 2 – this time with a “living breathing” dog named Laika on board. The
Americans followed. On December 6, 1957 the US launched Vanguard. It rose a few
feet and blew up, wounding America’s pride.
The Americans stepped up the establishment of their
spaceport at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Then the unthinkable happened. On April
12, 1961, Russian cosmonaut, Yuri A. Gagarin, in Vostok 1, became the first
human in space. He orbited Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. “Neil and all those
who flew saluted Gagarin.” America’s Alan Shepard followed three weeks later
with a suborbital height of 116 miles for 300 miles – not into orbit like
Gagarin, but close.
Close was not good enough for the young President
John F. Kennedy. In May 1961 President Kennedy, who was “ready to take a
gamble” on spaceflight announced to all Americans: “I believe this nation should
commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man
on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.”
Barbree describes the activities, projects, and tests
undertaken by NASA to achieve Kennedy’s goal – from sessions in the centrifuge
(the Wheel), a mockup of the Gemini cockpit, to simulations of gravity and
weightlessness, how to wear pressure suits, how to use ejection seats and
parachutes, periods in confined spaces with heat, cold, noise and vibrations, and
even jungle survival. Suborbital and orbital tests before the moon landing,
staying for longer and longer periods in space, are all detailed – along with
every human tragedy. The aim was “eight days or bust” in space to replicate the
four days it would take to reach the moon, and the time for the return journey.
On March 8, 1965, the Russians led again. Alexei
Leonov was the first man to walk in space, floating for about 20 minutes linked
to his spacecraft. America’s first space walk was six weeks later by Ed White.
Barbree leaves no detail unmentioned as he recounts the preparations for a
lunar landing. On January 4, 1969, America announced that Neil Armstrong, Buzz
Aldrin, and Michael Collins were training to be the first “moon landers.”
Armstrong would lead the expedition, Aldrin would be the second man on the moon
(to collect specimens), and Collins would stay behind in the command module,
Apollo 11, orbiting the moon, waiting to pick them up (he was their ride home).
Armstrong and Aldrin would be in the Eagle, the lunar shuttle that would land
on the moon, and afterwards reconnect with Apollo 11 before being jettisoned
for the return journey home. They had six months to prepare.
The three astronauts left Earth on July 16, 1969 for
their four-day journey to the moon. They landed and walked on the moon on July
20, and returned home safely on July 24. They were heroes.
In the three and half years that followed, 24
Americans visited the moon, but only 12 landed and walked on its surface. The
last man on the moon, Gene Cernan, did so on December 17, 1972. No Russian
cosmonauts ever landed on the moon. No human has been on the moon since. Eight
of the 12 moon landers are still alive.
Neil Armstrong died on August 25, 2012. He left Earth
with no regrets.
Barbree includes an exceptionally liberal amount of
black and white official NASA photographs throughout the text. He writes of
Neil Armstrong’s marriage, his two boys, the death of his daughter, his divorce,
and his second marriage, but it is primarily a professional profile. It is the
documentation of the psychology of a decision maker and one of the finest
astronauts in the elite community of moon landers. Armstrong was self-effacing
and never wrote a memoir or autobiography. Readers will feel the author’s passion for space flight and
his admiration for a remarkable man, and a remarkably vast team in front of and
behind him. But it would've been better if the man himself had written about his own experience and feelings.
Postscript: The 12 astronauts that landed on the moon
were (in order):
(1) Neil Alden Armstrong (deceased)
(2) Buzz Aldrin
(3) Charles “Pete” Conrad (deceased)
(4) Alan L Bean
(5) Alan Shepard (deceased)
(6) Edgar D Mitchell
(7) David Randolph Scott
(8) James B Irwin (deceased)
(9) John Watts Young
(10) Charles M Duke
(11) Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, and
(12) Eugene A Cernan
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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