Table of Contents
For my father and to those for whom the journey is the destination.S.M.
Who Is Neil Armstrong?
It is July 16, 1969. By 9 A.M. the temperature hits a whopping ninety degrees. Thats just a typical summer morning in central Florida. The heat does not stop a crowd of a million people from coming as close to Cape Kennedy as they can get. That is where the United States will launch a spacecraft in just a little while. Carloads of people line the roads for miles. Hundreds of boats bob in the waters just offshore. The beaches swarm with people. Everyone hopes to get a glimpse of the Apollo 11 spacecraft as it soars off into the heavens.
Two thousand reporters are in the press area, ready to write headline stories for their newspapers. In special stands nearest to the launchpad at Cape Kennedy are many members of Congress, the U.S. vice president, and many famous names in show business and sports.
Among all these important people are two young boys, twelve-year-old Rick and six-year-old Mark Armstrong. They stand close to their mother, Janet, who looks as nervous and excited as they do.
Like everyone else, the boys are watching the giant needlelike rocket. It stands thirty stories high.
At the very top is a space capsule; three astronauts are inside. One of them is the boys father. His name is Neil Armstrong. He is the commander of this space missionApollo 11. And if all goes well, in four days he will become the first person to set foot on the moon... but that is a big if. No spacecraft has ever tried to land on the moon before. What if Apollo 11 makes it to the moon but then cant get back to Earth?... So many things could go wrong.
Apollo 11 may either make history or end in tragedy.
Chapter 1
A Boy Who Loved Flying
Just after midnight on August 5, 1930, Neil Armstrong was born in the Ohio farmhouse that belonged to his grandparents.
Neil was the oldest of Stephen and Viola Armstrongs three children. He had a younger sister named June and a younger brother named Dean. Neil was always his mothers pet. She once wrote that he was a pleasure for us to raise in every way. Maybe that was because Neil was a lot like his mothercalm, serious, and determined. Neil never had trouble making friends. Still, he was shy and not as fun-loving as Dean.
Neils mother stayed at home caring for the children. She also taught Sunday school. Neils father worked for the Ohio state government. Because of his job, the family had to move many timesin fact, they moved sixteen times before Neil was thirteen! Finally the Armstrongs settled in the little Ohio town of Wapakoneta.
In the 1930s planes were still thought of as unusualand exciting. Many people had never flown in one. Only three years before Neil was born, in 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew nonstop across the Atlantic. He was the first person to make a transatlantic flight, and it took thirty-three and a half hours! To get to Europe, people from the United States still traveled by ship, which took four days on a luxury liner. For long trips across the country, people took trains. In 1930 it took about a week to get from New York to California by railroad.
From the time he was a little boy, Neil was fascinated by airplanes and flying. When he was just a toddler, he saw an air show in Cleveland, Ohio, with his dad. Neil took his first plane ride when he was only six. The plane was called the Tin Goose. It wasnt really made out of tin. Its strong body was made of aluminum. The Tin Goose could carry up to twelve passengers, who sat on scratchy wicker seats. Its engines rattled and roared as the goose reached a little over a hundred miles an hour. Later on, Neils father confessed that he had been scared to death. As for Neil, he had enjoyed every minute.
THE FIRST AIRPLANE
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS, ORVILLE AND WILBUR, GREW UP IN DAYTON, OHIO, NEAR WHERE NEIL ARMSTRONG WAS BORN. LIKE NEIL, THEY WERE INTERESTED IN ANYTHING THAT FLEW FROM THE TIME THEY WERE KIDS. THEY MADE PAPER TOYS THAT THEY CALLED BATS, WHICH COULD GLIDE ON AIR CURRENTS.
BUT IN 1903, WHEN WILBUR WAS THIRTY-SIX AND ORVILLE WAS THIRTY-TWO, THEY DID SOMETHING AMAZING, SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE HAD DREAMED OF DOING FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. THEY BUILT THE FIRST REAL AIRPLANEONE WITH AN ENGINETHAT ACTUALLY FLEW INSTEAD OF GLIDING ON THE WIND.
THEIR ONE-SEATER PLANE WAS MADE OF WOOD AND CLOTH. IT WAS EIGHT FEET HIGH AND HAD WINGS THAT WENT FORTY FEET ACROSS. ORVILLE MADE THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL FLIGHT ON DECEMBER 17, 1903, IN KITTY HAWK, NORTH CAROLINA. (THE WEATHER WAS MUCH BETTER THERE THAN IN OHIO!)
HOW LONG WAS THE FLIGHT? ONLY TWELVE SECONDS.
AND HOW FAR DID THE PLANE TRAVEL? ONLY 120 FEET. AND IT WAS ONLY TWENTY FEET OFF THE GROUND. BUT IT WAS THE BEGINNING OF A WHOLE NEW AGE!
Neil loved building model planes out of balsa wood, wire, and tissue paper. They were powered by wound-up rubber bands. In the basement, he set up a wind tunnel with a fan so he could see how well his models flew. According to his brother Dean, sometimes Neil would fly one of his old model planes out the window. He thought it was exciting to watch it crash on the driveway.
Neil belonged to a Boy Scout troop for many years. In fact, Neil became an Eagle Scout, the highest level in scouting. It was the 1940s by this time, and the United States was fighting against Germany in World War II. Neil and the other scouts made models of different enemy planes. No warplanes ever came anywhere near Ohio. Still, if one had, Neil could have identified it right away!
Neil read airplane magazines; he drew detailed sketches of his favorite planes. Learning about planes, however, wasnt the same as learning to fly planes. And thats what Neil wanted to do most of all.
