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The exasperating modesty of the first man on the Moon
Neil Armstrong: the engineer as celebrity (1st comment)
Tom Purdom
Most of the Apollo and Mercury astronauts were fighter pilots who became military test pilots. As Tom Wolfe depicted them in The Right Stuff, they shared the values and the worldview of the military "fighter jocks." Neil Armstrong, who died August 25, had been a military pilot, too. But he always insisted he was basically an engineer.
Armstrong joined the Navy as a pilot candidate because the Navy's Holloway Program would pay for his engineering education. He flew 78 missions during the Korean War and could have pursued a career as a naval aviator. Instead he earned his engineering degree and took a job with the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics— the research and development agency that eventually became NASA.
Armstrong famously earned his pilot's license a few months before he acquired a driver's license. His boyhood fascination with flight attracted him to a career as an aeronautical engineer. He spent his hard earned pocket money on flying lessons because he believed that an aeronautical engineer should know how to operate airplanes. Soon he realized that he could combine his two enthusiasms by becoming a pilot-engineer— the flying member of an aeronautical engineering team.
A "'private' person?
At NASA's predecessor, Armstrong became a research test pilot, spending his first months at a facility based in Cleveland. The flights he piloted there spawned papers he wrote on subjects like heat transfer at supersonic speeds.
Then Armstrong transferred to the Mecca of test pilots, Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, where he worked with experimental aircraft, including the Bell X-15 rocket plane.
The news media have a hard time pegging people like Armstrong. In a world where editors and TV producers are surrounded by ravenous publicity hounds every day, Armstrong avoided the spotlight. The mass media concluded that he was a "private" person.
To be sure, Armstrong was more private than most people, according to those closest to him. But he seems to have engaged in a reasonably active public life.
A lock of his hair
After the first moon landing in 1969, he presented the world with a relaxed, personable image during the global tour that NASA arranged. He gave talks and made other public appearances after he left NASA and became an engineering professor. He hosted the PBS series depicting Darwin's historic voyage on the Beagle. He engaged in good-natured hi-jinks, like a ceremonial visit to the Scottish town that had once decreed that it would hang any Armstrong who crossed its borders. He even picked up some cash doing a tire commercial.
Actors and writers readily appear on talk shows and undertake promotional tours because their careers (and their incomes) depend on the size of their audience. Engineers can ignore the publicity grind because they don't need that kind of attention. In Armstrong's case, it would have overwhelmed him.
He stopped sending signed replies to letter writers because he realized many of his supposed fans merely wanted an autograph they could sell. He got into a fight with his barber when he discovered the barber had made $3,000 selling his hair clippings.
Conrad's wisecrack
The third man on the Moon, Pete Conrad, would have made a more media-friendly Prime Space Celebrity. Conrad was a funny, irrepressibly exuberant military pilot. When he commanded the second landing on the Moon, he made a wisecrack about his height as he stepped onto the lunar surface: "That may have been a small step for Neil, but it's a big step for me."
But Conrad was only the third man on the Moon. In the eyes of the news merchants, only the First Man counts. Everybody else is an also-ran.
So the news media decided Armstrong was "mysterious" or "modest" because he declined to exploit the position they had given him. They would have presented their audience with a more accurate picture had they taken him at face value when he said he was "and ever will be, just a white socks, pocket protector nerdy engineer."
Accidental spotlight
He was modest by the standards of the celebrity mills, yes, but it was the modesty of the engineer— of someone who knows he's part of a team, someone whose accomplishments can only be appreciated by people who can penetrate the barriers created by mathematics and precise technical language.
The pilot side of his occupation transformed him into a celebrity. The news media know how to package stories about daredevils who risk their lives in dangerous machines. But what do you do when you discover that the figure on the stage is an engineer?
In a news universe dominated by actors, politicians and athletes, the technologists who transform our lives remain essentially invisible. When an engineer accidentally drifts into the spotlight, he seems odd and unfathomable.
That's no reflection on Armstrong. It's a reflection on the news media, which presume that everyone shares their insatiable appetite for public attention.♦
To read a related comment by Robert Zaller, click here.
To read a response, click here.
Armstrong joined the Navy as a pilot candidate because the Navy's Holloway Program would pay for his engineering education. He flew 78 missions during the Korean War and could have pursued a career as a naval aviator. Instead he earned his engineering degree and took a job with the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics— the research and development agency that eventually became NASA.
Armstrong famously earned his pilot's license a few months before he acquired a driver's license. His boyhood fascination with flight attracted him to a career as an aeronautical engineer. He spent his hard earned pocket money on flying lessons because he believed that an aeronautical engineer should know how to operate airplanes. Soon he realized that he could combine his two enthusiasms by becoming a pilot-engineer— the flying member of an aeronautical engineering team.
A "'private' person?
At NASA's predecessor, Armstrong became a research test pilot, spending his first months at a facility based in Cleveland. The flights he piloted there spawned papers he wrote on subjects like heat transfer at supersonic speeds.
Then Armstrong transferred to the Mecca of test pilots, Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, where he worked with experimental aircraft, including the Bell X-15 rocket plane.
The news media have a hard time pegging people like Armstrong. In a world where editors and TV producers are surrounded by ravenous publicity hounds every day, Armstrong avoided the spotlight. The mass media concluded that he was a "private" person.
To be sure, Armstrong was more private than most people, according to those closest to him. But he seems to have engaged in a reasonably active public life.
A lock of his hair
After the first moon landing in 1969, he presented the world with a relaxed, personable image during the global tour that NASA arranged. He gave talks and made other public appearances after he left NASA and became an engineering professor. He hosted the PBS series depicting Darwin's historic voyage on the Beagle. He engaged in good-natured hi-jinks, like a ceremonial visit to the Scottish town that had once decreed that it would hang any Armstrong who crossed its borders. He even picked up some cash doing a tire commercial.
Actors and writers readily appear on talk shows and undertake promotional tours because their careers (and their incomes) depend on the size of their audience. Engineers can ignore the publicity grind because they don't need that kind of attention. In Armstrong's case, it would have overwhelmed him.
He stopped sending signed replies to letter writers because he realized many of his supposed fans merely wanted an autograph they could sell. He got into a fight with his barber when he discovered the barber had made $3,000 selling his hair clippings.
Conrad's wisecrack
The third man on the Moon, Pete Conrad, would have made a more media-friendly Prime Space Celebrity. Conrad was a funny, irrepressibly exuberant military pilot. When he commanded the second landing on the Moon, he made a wisecrack about his height as he stepped onto the lunar surface: "That may have been a small step for Neil, but it's a big step for me."
But Conrad was only the third man on the Moon. In the eyes of the news merchants, only the First Man counts. Everybody else is an also-ran.
So the news media decided Armstrong was "mysterious" or "modest" because he declined to exploit the position they had given him. They would have presented their audience with a more accurate picture had they taken him at face value when he said he was "and ever will be, just a white socks, pocket protector nerdy engineer."
Accidental spotlight
He was modest by the standards of the celebrity mills, yes, but it was the modesty of the engineer— of someone who knows he's part of a team, someone whose accomplishments can only be appreciated by people who can penetrate the barriers created by mathematics and precise technical language.
The pilot side of his occupation transformed him into a celebrity. The news media know how to package stories about daredevils who risk their lives in dangerous machines. But what do you do when you discover that the figure on the stage is an engineer?
In a news universe dominated by actors, politicians and athletes, the technologists who transform our lives remain essentially invisible. When an engineer accidentally drifts into the spotlight, he seems odd and unfathomable.
That's no reflection on Armstrong. It's a reflection on the news media, which presume that everyone shares their insatiable appetite for public attention.♦
To read a related comment by Robert Zaller, click here.
To read a response, click here.
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