The Archives

摘要

1969 During the first moon landing, the nation was fixated on one man: Neil Armstrong, the pilot who had, just three years before, saved the Gemini 8 mission and the $24 billion space program from disaster (see Page 20). At a time of immense upheaval, America needed a hero and Armstrong was it. Described as "quiet and diffident," he was characteristically self-effacing when Newsweek asked about his role in the Apollo 11 mission: "If historians are fair," said Armstrong, who died in 2012 at 82, "they'll recognize that this landing is only one small part of a large program."