A Eulogy for 400,000 Moon Men and Women
Neil's passing isn't the sum total of one pretty amazing life... it is the passing of 400,000 Americans who were the slide rules and elbow grease of Project Apollo, the overwhelming amount of whom have passed without world-wide fanfare and eulogies. It is also the passing of the 'Greatest' Generation. Those who were teenagers and young adults during WWII. Who witnessed the first atomic bombs and who in a span of 12 years turned Jules Verne's Science Fiction and dreams of millions since the first human gazed at the moon in wonder, into Science Fact. We are all remembering and celebrating the life of 1 individual as if he did it all himself, and not to dismiss his accomplishment, but rather to bring perspective to all those who road along with him with the NASA, Apollo Project, and Apollo 11 mission patches sewn onto his space suit.
Without his 2nd in Command Buzz Aldrin's MIT Doctoral Thesis, the Mechanics of Orbital Rendezvous, Neil's first Mission on Gemini 8 would have never happened and without Buzz's physics and mathematical masterpiece, Apollo 11 could have never landed on the moon. And conversely, Neil was one of two test pilots who flew the prototype death trap lunar lander analogs that allowed the eventual 12 men to walk on the moon. There wasn't one man who landed on the moon that day in July, 1969, it was two... and a very lonely Michael Collins circling in the orbital Command Module 60 miles above, not knowing if he was going to have to return home alone.
The Eagle landed in the sea of Tranquility just as it ran out of landing fuel. Both men, Neil and Buzz, landed at the same time and Buzz was suited up and in the same Vacuum as Neil went down the ladder first. Standing on the shoulders of nearly half a million American's without whom neither one of those men could have descended that ladder. And in the bigger scheme, without Soviets Sergei Korolev and Yuri Gagarin and the others of the Red Moon program emblazoned with CCCP on their patches, we wouldn't have had the inspiration to go in the first place.
Neil's rocket mates, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins are still with us... for how long is up to greater forces than we humans know... but it is guaranteed that we won't have the Moon walkers with us much longer to inspire the next generations by what is possible. In this most vile of years where the things that get our blood boiling to a passion are private tax returns and birth certificate conspiracies... I wish we had an external force catalysizing us once again we can do things not because they were easy, but because they were hard. God Speed Neil Armstrong and all the people of NASA who have gone his path before.