your both wrong columbus proved once and for all the earth is sqaure and if you go to the far edges you fall off. just watch pirate of the carabean and you'll see its true.
His status of "Hero" is unquestioned, but I think a lot of people don't understand just how deep that status goes. Setting foot on the moon, while obviously one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity, wasn't his only contribution.
He earned his pilot's certificate at age 15, before he got his driver's license. He earned his Eagle Scout at 17 (one thing he and I share in common). He studied aerospace engineering at Purdue, getting his BS in 1955, and an MS in aerospace engineering from USC in 1970. In 1949 he joined the Navy, where he went through flight training to be a carrier pilot. He flew combat mission over Korea in an F9F Panther, and was shot down during a low-altitude bombing run near Wonsan (he was forced to eject near Pohang and was picked up by allied forces)
Post Korea he began working as a test pilot and aerospace engineer, working briefly at Lewis Flight Propulsion Lab in Ohio before moving to Edwards Air Force Base in California. There he flew the B-29 launch craft for the D-558 Skyrocket test aircraft, the Bell X-1B, The Bell X-5, and the North American X-15, that craft propelling him to a maximum height of 207,000 feet and a speed of Mach 5.7. He was also a project pilot on the F-100 Super Sabre A and C models, the F-101 Voodoo, the F-104A Starfighter, F-105 Thunderchief, F-106 Delta Dart, B-47 Stratojet, and KC-135 Stratotanker.
As an Astronaut, he flew as Pilot for the Gemini 8 mission, which ended up with him having to abort the mission early due to an uncontrollable 1-revolution-per-second roll. He was the backup pilot for Gemini 11, serving as CAPCOM for the mission.
He was named as the backup crew for Apollo 9, but the Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 crews were swapped, which caused Armstrong to be placed as the primary crew for Apollo 11 according to their crew rotation system. During the training for the mission, the Lunar crews were trained on the Lunar Landing Training Vehicles, nicknamed "flying bedsteads." These were rocket-propelled vehicles meant to simulate the landing and ascent of the LEM. On May 6, 1968, Armstrong's LLTV suffered an electronics failure at an altitude of about 100 feet, forcing him to eject horizontally. His only injury was a bitten tongue, but another half-second of hesitation would have cost him his life, according to after-incident reports.
Apollo 11 launched from Kennedy Space Center July 16, 1969 at 13:32 UTC. During the launch, Armstrong's heart rate never went above 110 bpm, showing his calm nerves. On July 21 at 02:56 UTC, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the surface of another stellar object, uttering possibly one of the most famous lines in human history, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Fifteen hours later, at 17:54 UTC, the ascent stage took off, leaving behind numerous scientific probes and stations, an American Flag, and a plaque which says "Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We Came in Peace For All Mankind." They then rendezvoused with the Command module and came back to an eventual safe return on July 24, at 16:15 UTC just south of the Johnson Atoll in the South Pacific. The brought home approximately 50 pounds of surface samples and some of the most stunning and meaningful photographs ever taken.
After returning from Apollo, Armstrong basically retired from NASA, instead becoming an Aerospace Engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati. He resigned from that position in 1979, and basically lived a private life from then until his death today.
His legacy is that of exploration and science. Over a dozen schools nation wide were named after him. The $53 milllion dollar engineering building at the University of Cincinnati is named after him. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the Congressional Gold medal, and the Collier Trophy from the National Aeronautics Association.
During his last public speech, at a Science and Technology Summit in The Netherlands in 2010, he stated that, if asked, he would volunteer his services to be commander of a manned mission to Mars. He was 80 at the time.
There is no TL;DR for a man like this. He spent his life in pursuit of goals that defied gravity, quite literally. He was, and still is, an inspiration and role model for millions of people world wide. He will be sorely, sorely missed.
Speaking of tl;dr:
I highly recommend the books "A Man on the Moon" by Andrew Chaikin (it was the basis for the HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon") and "This New Ocean" by Wm. F. Burrows. cn
And for the sheer beauty of it ... "Full Moon" by Michael Light. cn