He was the chosen one, but can someone inform me of the major achievements he himself did? As far as I know, many others could have been chosen to make the historic first steps.
Note: I'm not trying to make a comment phrased as a question here. It's truly a question.
He saved Gemini 8 from near-disaster due to a stuck thruster during the first ever US docking in space (with an Agena target satellite). He nursed an X-15 in after a test flight went wrong, setting a record along the way for the longest X-15 flight in the entire program (it bounced off the top of the stratosphere during re-entry and had to glide about a hundred miles further than normal to make the airfield). He was the LLTV test pilot -- the LLTV was the turbofan-powered test bed for the Lunar Excursion Module's descent control systems -- and survived an engine failure at low altitude, ejecting about 0.5 seconds before it became non-recoverable.
His list of hair-raising flight test achievements is remarkable; he was basically the best test pilot in the astronaut program for making split-second decisions when the shit hit the fan, and he'd also been the test pilot for the lunar lander. Do you need any more?
You left off the part where he also had the technical chops beyond just being a pilot he had a background in aeronautical engineering. He was lucky, smart and humble enough to know the difference between the two.
And even his lunar landing, where he took manual control as the automated sequence was landing them in a boulderized crater side, and managed a landing in a safe place with 20~30s of fuel left
Among other things, he managed to land Eagle with only seconds of fuel remaining, having manually maneuvered it to an alternative landing site after the computer had navigated to a primarly landing area covered with boulders. All this while several unexpected computer alarms were going off.
Maybe others could have done that as well, but Armstrong actually did it, staying calm under unimaginable pressure and averting disaster.
Ok, question. How do you develop the skill of keeping calm under that kind of pressure? I get stressed for the silliest things, I'm sure there is a way to fix that.
The best way I know of to deal situations that make you uncomfortable is to expose yourself to them, often but at low intesity, and build up a tolerance. Start small, and as you handle each issue, you'll find yourself thinking "I've got this, can't be much worse than [x] that I did last week."
I used to be a really heavy traveller, carry everything I could possibly need with me, just in case. I gradually whittled that down, and now when I get nervous about forgetting something when I pack, I just tell myself that so long as I have essentials (eg wallet, passport/ticket, change of clothes, netbook), I can fix everything else. So set yourself up with small stressful situations, know that you have a relatively painless way to back out of them, and talk yourself through it.
Have faith that you can fix whatever situation you find yourself in. You may have to start out by lying to yourself in saying that, but as you try (and succeed) you'll find that yes, you can handle things. Even the ones that really worry you.
That 'I can fix it' attitude is such a freeing feeling. My wife used to travel heavy, and it's taken me a few years, but she's now got it as well - 'if I forget my hairdryer/etc., I can just find or buy one'.
Not optimal, but definitely better than being stressed about everything.
I mean, really, what's the WORST that can happen, that's within your control?
I'm sure it can be helped, but I'm not sure if the kind of cool Neil Armstrong displayed can really be developed. If you want a good illustration of this, hang out with pilots and listen to their stories. I recall one pilot friend of mine, a flight instructor, describing an incident when he was guiding a student to landing in a small plane, when something malfunctioned and the plane started to tilt a hundred or so feet off the ground. My friend shouted "my plane" and took control, correctly diagnosed what had malfunctioned, and guided the plane to a safe landing.
Analyzing what happened afterwards, a few things were determined: first, given the altitude at which the malfunction occurred, my friend must have seen the problem, correctly diagnosed it, and acted in less than a second, and the total amount of time from when it offered until touchdown was something like four seconds. Second, this particular failure had occurred on this model of plane a handful of other times at such a low altitude, and had resulted in fatal crashes every other time.
So, being able to do that comes from a combination of a few things: tremendous rote training and knowledge of the plane, the ability to act calmly when your life is in peril, and an extremely efficient nervous system. Some of that can be developed, particularly the first one, and response to negative stimuli can probably be improved if you have time to think rationally, but in emergency circumstances like what an astronaut or a pilot go through, I have to say I think you're probably born that way, baby.
> I'm sure it can be helped, but I'm not sure if the kind of cool Neil Armstrong displayed can really be developed.
Neil Armstrong was a test pilot. The kind of person who is told to push designs to their limits, and is responsible for keeping things in line when it's all hitting the fan. They need to keep cool, and it can definitely be developed, as I'm sure it is for any test pilot.
It's developed through a combination of intimate (intuitive) understanding of your equipment and the situations you find yourself in, an expectation of yourself to be able to handle whatever's thrown at you, and repeated exposure to stressful situations, so that you are familiar and comfortable with them.
I don't know how much this last one applies to Neil Armstrong specifically, but many people who keep cool in the face of death can do so because they've already accepted that death is a very real possible outcome. Even when the stakes aren't so high, if you've analyzed a situation before going in to it, and have decided that you are comfortable with any likely outcome, including the worst possible outcome, then your mind is freed from worrying and can focus on executing.
On the one hand, yes, facing death over and over again, combined with a psychological willingness to accept whatever happens, can probably take a cool headed person and give them nerves of steel. On the other hand, repeated exposure to extreme stress can also destroy a person if they're not inclined to grow stronger from it. I guess my previous point was, I'm not denying that response to stress can be improved, but there's a strong element of talent in being the sort of person willing to strap oneself to a controlled explosive moving at thousands of miles per hour in the first place.
The first way you deal with pressure is to know your shit. Risk is OK. This is really an importanct point, in addition to all of the very good other points made here (experience, etc).
Uncertainty = don't know what the f^ck is going on. Risk = these are the things that are going wrong, this is how it could get worse, this is how it could get better.
This makes it then a problem of managing information inbound/outbound, maintaining situational awareness (ie, your eyes and ears) and methodically making the best at what you've got to work with.
Very little bandwidth will be left over for "fear" or getting "nervous". On the Apollo mission, there is a story about 1202 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Garman), if you read this you will see how they handled it.
TL;DR The computer broke, and a split decision was needed to avoid a catastrophic failure.
Bales later recalled, "Quite frankly, Jack, who had these things memorized said, 'that's okay', before I could even remember which group it was in". His quick reactions and in depth knowledge led others on his team to give him the nickname "Gar-Flash".
I am not sure on developing it, but I am good in crisis and can describe what goes through my mind.
A problem is realized. A sense of urgency develops. Assessing as fast as possible the severity, the higher the severity the less assessment needs to be done vs. moving to solving and acting.
Look for the root cause of the problem vs. effects and think of two or three routes of action, quickly. Think ~two logical steps down each route to rule out obviously bad actions. Then go with the one that is the simplest/quickest or has the best gut feeling (feeling of rightness). React.
The main thing for me, is when I get that sense of urgency, all self-concerns and distracting thoughts fall away to the process above. It is a directed panic on the inside, but to the outside observer, it looks calm and methodological. When I get to the react part, it is all I concentrate on. Panic drops for something like intense focus.
I don't know if this will help, but maybe doing similar processes for little emergencies will train your reactions for larger ones.
"The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe has quite a bit on this topic. The answer seems to be habitualizing or "adapting out" fear. According to the book, when John Glenn was launched into space for the first time, the situation was so familiar that his heart rate held at around 70bpm.
This is a very good question. I have some experience with this; I find that as situations get more stressful, I become more and more calm and try to deal with it. I think it's a combination of a personality trait (my mother recently reminded me that I was the calmest of all her children) and a certain amount of self training. I used to remind myself (and others) that worry and panic do nothing to help the situation and that times of stress, more than ever, require a rational response. Eventually, the rational response mechanism discards emotional or stress based reactions as sub-optimal and you search for better ones. I know, easier said than done, but better said than never.
Neil Stephenson addresses this in his book, Anathem.
He states it's a fact "well known" within the military etc. that a certain percentage of folks respond very well to training for high risk, high intensity, high pressure situations (i.e facing live fire in combat) while a certain percentage simply flub and perform no better than someone who hadn't had the years of prior training.
Thing is, you don't know who's who until the event happens.
Anyway read the book it's really good in you're into this sort of idea, and into hackerish ideas in general
I thought Buzz piloted the lander and Neil was the mission commander? I'm still in the middle of listening to his biography, _First Man_, but they chose Neil to go up before they even took off, because they felt Neil was more level-headed than Buzz, and would handle the fame and attention better. Of course, they couldn't tell the public this. What they said was that it would be too hard for the pilot to reach the door with his suit on and Neil in the way.
There was a ton of engineering and test piloting that was accomplished on his part. You don't just ride Apollo up to the moon. And by all account, he was one of the most competent test pilots/aeronautical engineers in the program.
This was one of my calculus teachers in college, around 2006: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/akers.html For the skimmers, he was on the Hubble repair mission and held the record for the longest space walk until very recently I believe.
Astronaut aside, he was a very friendly and approachable "good ol' boy", he was an excellent teacher, he was a math major in college himself, he was a principal at a rural school district before joining the military, and in the military did math/physics for missile guidance systems. I don't think you'd find anyone more convincing about the practicality and need of calculating vectors in three dimensions than someone who was plotting missile trajectories for a living. He had great practical examples for the calculus principles being taught.
Understandably every student, myself included, always wanted to know more about his previous career before teaching us calculus since it's not every day you meet an astronaut, and you're a little star-struck (no pun intended) when you've got such direct access to the guy. So to prevent distracting, time consuming and calculus-irrelevant questions during classes he'd set up an Q&A session one night each semester outside class and settle the curiosities. You could kind of tell he didn't really enjoy it, but felt obligated to do it because astronauts are public figures and kind of have to oblige the public a bit, and because it was better than his classes being distracted by it all semester.
The one thing that he said that stuck with me was that since it had been >10 years since he had been with NASA was that his memory of his tasks in space have been blurred from having retold the stories so many times. The actions and the stories have become separate in his mind.
He was chosen, but not at random off of the street. This was an exclusive program that he earned his spot in.
Beyond that there's the philosophical question. The tallest tree in the forest owes everything to genetics and environment. Is the same thing true for great men? I say yes, but that doesn't diminish his example for me. He was still a great man.
Well, it's true that he worked with many artists and that others were also revolutionising the comic book form around the same period, but Gaiman really captured some sort of zeitgeist with the sandman series that opened up the field for those who came after.
Oh, you mean Armstrong. I think he just went to the moon and stuff.
Gotta agree. But people apparently need a Hero and hero worship to get exited about things (ie. funding).
I bet there are thousands of people who would have been able and willing to do the same things as Neil, and who today would happily make a one way trip to Mars.
Most people of course couldn't be bothered to get off their couch, so these people (eg. asttronauts) of course get my respect for pushing the envelope.
So, do you actually know anything about Neil's life, and are dismissing all of those accomplishments, or are you making that statement out of complete ignorance? He didn't pop out of a test tube and into the Eagle, and sure, lets say thousands of people were equally qualified. That's about 0.00002% of of the population, and puts him in the top 0.1% of the people that could have done what he did (i.e. he did it).
Agree with what? I made no statements and declared no opinions. I simply asked a question because I knew there was a lot to the man, and I wanted to learn more.
Note: I'm not trying to make a comment phrased as a question here. It's truly a question.