Anyone have any stories or thoughts to share?
Personally I am quite bummed. Saw him at a conference a couple of years ago and was very impressed by him.
I saw him on TV in 1969 when he & Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. May have been deep down what led me into engineering years later.
We all have to go someday, but it must be nice to know, like Neil Armstrong and Sir Edmund Hillary ( first to summit Everest ) that nobody can ever match what you did ...
I lived in a commune in England in 69 when they made the landing, we all stood in the garden, watching the moon , and watching the TV through the windows. ( the moon was a hell of a lot clearer than the TV broadcast ! )
It was just so unbelievable what they did, I worked at a NASA tracking station up until the year before, and had found the Gemini missions so mindblowing, but to look at the moon and know they were walking on it was magic. Well done Neil and NASA !
Being only 22, I feel left out....
The first man to walk on the moon lived long enough to see us put a lander-sized robot on mars.
imagine visting a place only a few people have visited but knowing you can never go back would have to make you a little depressed ..
but yeah it's sad news but hey he lived a life only a privlidged few got to experience 
He diffidently had THE RIGHT STUFF!
Yep I remember getting up at three in the morning to watch it. I had been following the whole space program and at that time I could recite all the people who had been in space and that included the Russians as well.
When I saw him speak in 2010, this young guy said "I am a fighter pilot, I want to go to space, like you. Please tell me, Mr. Armstrong - What type of person does it take to go to Mars? Who would you chose?" (paraphrasing here, don't remember the exact wording.)
Neil immediately responded that he knew someone with just the right qualifications and experience for that mission. He himself would be the ideal candidate.
It somehow was such a cool moment, because I really felt like he meant it, that he really, really wanted to go to Mars.
I missed his talk (shame on me) but in the question and answers session afterwards his general attitude was "You guys are all impressed by me - but really - you will have all these amazing opportunities - go and grab them."
I still have a box full of newspapers and clippings from that day, can't bring myself to throw them out.
http://robgray.com/graynomad/issues/issue_052/index.php
Scroll to about half way down the page.
Rob
wizdum:
The first man to walk on the moon lived long enough to see us put a lander-sized robot on mars.
And the first man (according to American history 8)) to make a powered flight lived to see middle-class people flying cross-country. And even owning personal airplanes 
I don't remember whether Armstrong was among them, but I know several of the Apollo astronauts have been pretty outspoken about their disappointment at the near-abandonment of manned space exploration.
He was among them.
“When President Obama recently released his budget for NASA, he proposed a slight increase in total funding…the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program, its Ares 1 and Ares V rockets, and the Orion spacecraft, is devastating. . . . It appears that we will have wasted our current $10+ billion dollar investment in Constellation and, equally importantly, we will have lost the many years required to recreate the equivalent of what we will have discarded. . . For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destinies our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the President’s plan envisages humans traveling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years.”
Then again, we have gotten to a point where current technology allows civilians to put Arduinos in low orbit. Maybe there is hope after all. Looking at the comments on NASA stories is depressing. The general public seems content to just stop scientific exploration all together.
I'm terribly sorry. That's one GREAT step for a man, one giant LOSS for mankind. RIP!
It was just saying on the UK news that response in the States has been very muted. The reporter says that he was too modest for many modern Americans. Is that what you see is happening?
Grumpy_Mike:
It was just saying on the UK news that response in the States has been very muted. The reporter says that he was too modest for many modern Americans. Is that what you see is happening?
Apparently the news was overshadowed by some TV star having a child or something? I don't know. I know he liked his privacy, and did not give many interviews. He was the kind of person that spoke only when he had something important and well thought out to say. The History Channel changed their programming to show a documentary on the US moon missions, but I didn't see much from the mainstream media. A lot of it probably has to do with the election as well. Theres a large portion of the US that sees NASA as a huge waste of taxpayer money, making a favorable comment about the US Space program would be bad PR.
Grumpy_Mike:
It was just saying on the UK news that response in the States has been very muted. The reporter says that he was too modest for many modern Americans. Is that what you see is happening?
I don't think the muted response was due to his modesty. In my opinion the passing of any of our older (>50) folks pass without much comment, unless they were rock stars or others who appealed to the youth oriented culture so common here.
That fits in with the facebook post I saw today with a picture of Neil and Michael Jackson, saying RIP both great Moonwalkers !
No respect for the training and backup, and sheer guts to do a real moonwalk..
I wasn't even a teenager at the time of the Apollo 11 landing, but seemed to know that a hugely pointless war in Vietnam must be costing a great deal more than Apollo, yet could hear US taxpayers complaining that this great inspiring adventure was costing too much.
I decided I didn't understand grown-ups.
It's an opinion I still hold.
AWOL:
I wasn't even a teenager at the time of the Apollo 11 landing, but seemed to know that a hugely pointless war in Vietnam must be costing a great deal more than Apollo, yet could hear US taxpayers complaining that this great inspiring adventure was costing too much.
I decided I didn't understand grown-ups.
It's an opinion I still hold.
I once heard that during the same years as the Apollo program ran, women in the US spent more on cosmetics than NASA did on Apollo. No idea whether it's true but I'd be willing to believe it. I don't intend it at all as a sexist remark, I'm sure many other well-known excesses could be easily substituted.
Yep I remember getting up at three in the morning to watch it
Yes, me too, and I recorded the audio on a cassette. I wish I knew where that was, oops I am going to get in trouble for piracy now. I heard Neil Armstrong being talked about on the radio a few weeks ago. He did not give many interviews or talks but he had a soft spot for accountants as his father was one. His last interview was to the Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia. Here is a link with a happy photo
AWOL:
I decided I didn't understand grown-ups.
It's an opinion I still hold.
ditto.
I was also quite surprised at all the negativity towards the curiosity mission - especially from "environmentalists" saying, that it was money ill spent. I recently saw some numbers on how much Verizon spent on improving network coverage in the US ... its no longer fresh in my memory but I remember thinking "wow. thats more than curiosity cost"
oh and about the slightly negative comment about Michael Jackson. Both moonwalkers contributed significantly to our current culture. I dont find that there is any disrespect in such a comment. I doubt Jackson put less effort into his "moonwalk" than Armstrong did.
on that note, I am attaching another image which was floating around facebook... a friend of mine uploaded it, but he might have copied it from somewhere else - dont know:
