Neil Armstrong R.I.P.

Yesterday my great hero as a teenager passed away. In July 1969 I stayed up all night to watch Neil Armstrong land and walk on the Moon. He was a great aeronautics engineer and a highly skilled pilot.

How strange it must have been to approach the lunar surface with Buzz Aldrin and discover that they were going to land into a large football field sized crater full of rocks and boulders. Neil had to steer the lunar module a good distance over this alien world to find a safer area, nearly running out of fuel in the process. His heart rate rose to 156 beats per minute but he put the lunar module down perfectly.

"The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said.

Last night I walked out onto our balcony and watched the D shaped Moon about to set on the western horizon. It seemed to me that even the Moon itself was bowing in respect to the human who first touched its face.