One Armstrong after another - The hero after the zero

Blame my father for the fact that this is my second successive post on someone named Armstrong. The second Armstrong, first name Neil, died recently and is not a fallen one like the first, first name Lance (my previous post).

Growing up as a son of a physics teacher had its perils. In the early to mid-1960s I had been dragged down to screening of documentaries of Gemini and Apollo missions at the USIS.

Blame my father for my addiction to reading, cutting out pictures from newspapers about American space explorations. It did not escape me that the Soviets were doing equally amazing stuff. It was just that they were so secretive there was nothing I could glean from my father who did not get the tabloid sized Soviet Nadu from the college library. When the Gemini IV EVA “spacewalk” happened – when Edward White just “floated” in space – learning more from my father was a daily feature of our interactions.

I must have been one of the few people of my age then who was interested in the accidents in the space programs of both the US (Three astronauts burned during a test) and USSR (Three cosmonauts found burnt in their capsule upon landing). And, truly sad to say, both the countries celebrated the failures of the other, no matter people died in each.

All of the above is a prelude to how I got to be so keenly aware of the Apollo program. Pictures of the far side of the moon – Apollo 8 – taught me clearly that there is no permanent dark side of the moon (Dark side of the moon of Pink Floyd came much later). Then came Apollo 11 and the name Neil Armstrong got imprinted on my mind.

There was a time, after the successful trio returned to earth, I felt sad that Michael Collins did not get the credit that was due him. Over time I understood what teamwork means and Apollo 11 paved the way for that evolution in my thinking. And Armstrong played a part. Call me crazy but I spent much time in the M I King Library of the University of Kentucky spooling out microfilms and microfiche (What are these, you ask? Can’t explain. Sorry) of New York Times of the late ‘60s reading about Armstrong. His repeated assertions that he was just the front man for a combined effort and the credit properly belongs to multitudes made a mark on me.

At his death I have read his obituaries and other articles about Armstrong and the Apollo program in The New York Times, The Guardian and The Economist – sources covering two countries and differing editorial stances. All of them made it a point to mention one thing, thankfully agreeing on it – when Armstrong said that he was merely the front man, he meant that he was merely the front man. His sincerity comes through in each of these obituaries. It is now my misplaced cynicism about Armstrong gave way to fulsome admiration of the character of the man. I am not saying he was above politics and all that. Yet, his feeling uncomfortable about spotlight being shown on him for what is the achievement of 400,000 (yes, you heard that right) people does smoothen out all those cynical wrinkles.

Now, what else did I learn about the Apollo program from the three obituaries I read? I knew that the mission to the moon was a political mission and not a purely scientific one, though it did give rise to a spurt in miniaturization in electronics. But I got the details, about how the US President J F Kennedy just rode roughshod over the then NASA administrator to get his way. And, JFK did get his way, and how – sending a man to moon and bringing him back before the end of the decade, with more than five months to spare. Something to admire about the can do spirit of Americans.

I also learned that in 1966 “NASA was spending about 4.4% of the American government’s entire budget.” So, one can argue that America had the wherewithal to dream, dream big and realize it. Compare that with Indian’s paltry commitment, year on year for its space program. When we look down upon our achievements we have to give a nod to this reality, which typically we do not. We are weak in contextualizing – my conclusion.

On a more positive note, at least from my perspective, the symbol of the test-pilot school at the Edwards Air Force Base is a “slide rule over a stylized fighter jet”! I experienced ecstasy when I read this. Slide rule, test-pilot school, symbol, Edwards Air Force Base – how about tagging this post with all of them! I have a lasting, though unrequited (it never even pointed out, much less correct my mistakes!), love affair with the slide rule, my constant companion for three years during my engineering education (undergraduate).

But Armstrong went many steps further as he explained himself: ”I am, and ever will be, a white-socks [someone should have told him that it must be white-pairs of socks], [the regulation white] pocket-protector, nerdy engineer [before Revenge of the Nerds came on the scene], born under the second law of thermodynamics [my favorite law as it deals with chaos], steeped in steam tables [I steamed about other tables], in love with free-body diagrams [leave your dirty mind at the door; this is truly my passion], transformed by Laplace [this gave me a lot of trouble, I can admit now], and propelled by compressible flow [this one passed me by].” There he is, my engineer hero!

Neil Armstrong was a no-boasting (reportedly he told an interviewer before his historic flight that “For heaven’s sake, I loathe danger”), no-bullying and soft-spoken man-giant. I was all of 14 years and a few days short of 11 months old and he helped me not just sustain my interest in astronomy and space exploration but truly made clear to me what heroism is, what should be called an achievement and how to carry oneself with magnanimity.

Thanks Neil Armstrong.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P.S. I must thank my father too to have taken the interest in me to get me interested in physics, astronomy, and space travel. Without his valiant efforts to school his dumb son, I would not be appreciating Neil Armstrong here.