Books: First Man - The Life of Neil A. Armstrong

 

(Drivebycuriosity) - "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" - Neil Armstrong  became a legend for being the first one who stepped onto the moon and speaking these eternally famous words. 

Last year I enjoyed the biopic "The first man" which inspired me to buy the  biography "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong" by James R. Hansen which the movie was based on (amazon). I learned from the book that in the 1950s & 60s America has been very optimistic and guided by positive thinking and that the Americans believed in progress & in technology. Where has this optimism gone? 

Hansen collected and processed an enormous amount of material and presents his research over 784 pages.  Unfortunately this lead to some lengths and makes the reading exhaustive. So I skimmed some parts and focused on the highlights. The biography starts slowly and focuses in the begin on Armstrong`s ancestors and his hyper-religious mother, too much for my taste, but then its getting better when the plot turns to Armstrong himself.

Hansen describes the character traits of his protagonist which might explain why Armstrong became "the first man" on the moon. Armstrong had a mind that absorbed things like a sponge and a memory that remembered like a photograph. "That set him apart from mere mortals". He was "cool, calm, and energized" and approached  problems in an analytical & scientific way. Armstrong combined his mental strengths with strong physical conditions even though he didn`t appreciate physical exercises.
Armstrong joked with friends that exercise wasted a person`s precious allotment of heartbeats. But anyway, he excelled at the sheer endless tests which brought "every possible force and stress and every possible flight condition" on the pilots. Armstrong`s career also benefited from the fact that he learned flying before he became an engineer and "understood what contributed to the flight conditions".

The huge biography also describes the many incidents & accidents during the test flights during the Gemini & Apollo missions and the catastrophes which cost the lives of Armstrong´s colleagues and I learned a bit about how jet planes evolved into space crafts.

I found the book basically interesting but some trimming would have made it better.