In Memory of Neil Armstrong

I had a party on July 20, 1969. The night that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. It was at my house on Gumwood Drive, University Park, MD. It was a special night. I remember I sat on the roof of that house with a great back room and my Sony TV was hooked up to the Lafayette amp and speakers. We had a front row seat showing Neil walking on the moon.

I later met Neil Armstrong at an IBM Golden Circle. He spoke for about 30 minutes and sadly I remember nothing about what he said. I went up to him after he spoke and there were about 4 or 5 people who were asking him questions. He spoke quietly and answered each person as if there was no one else around. I was struck by his patience and humility as he treated each person that he spoke with as an important human being that deserved his attention.

Unlike my usual ADD behavior I waited until everyone had left and it was just he and I standing by the stage he had just spoken on. I had read the "Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe and I was prepared. He was not an imposing physical presence as he was shorter than I was which at that time I was about 6' 2". I am shorter now as gravity sucks!

I wanted to know about the descent onto the Moon. The Tom Wolfe book described a sequence of events that were fascinating. As the LEM Module reached about 1000 meters from the surface of the Moon the computers failed in a way that caused Armstrong to take over the descent manually. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to realize that you were so close yet the entire mission was at that point in jeopardy.

So, I, Bill Flannery, alone in an empty auditorium with the first man on the Moon asked him what that was like in those final moments. He said he "flew by wire". I knew what he meant as Tom Wolfe explained in his book what that meant.

Flying by wire is an old aviator's description of how they fly planes before all the technology took over. The plane's controls, flaps, tail, etc. were controlled by steel cables that the pilot manipulated from the cockpit with their feet on pedals and their hands on levers and the stick. It was about touch and sensing the tension of the wires.

The following is taken from Wikipedia: "When Armstrong noticed they were heading towards a landing area which he believed was unsafe, he took over manual control of the LM, and attempted to find an area which seemed safer, taking longer than expected, and longer than most simulations had taken.[68] For this reason, there was concern from mission control that the LM was running low on fuel.[69] Upon landing, Aldrin and Armstrong believed they had about 40 seconds worth of fuel left, including the 20 seconds worth of fuel which had to be saved in the event of an abort.[70] During training, Armstrong had landed the LLTV with less than 15 seconds left on several occasions, and he was also confident the LM could survive a straight-down fall from 50 feet (15 m) if needed. Analysis after the mission showed that at touchdown there were 45 to 50 seconds of propellant burn time left.[71]"

I was, to say the least, in total awe of this man who risked his life to land on the Moon. I had heard that he did not sign autographs as he was concerned that they would be sold on the web. I told him about my father's mission as the commanding officer of the USS Balao. My father spent the better part of a year underneath the Atlantic Ocean with a group of scientists cruising from Cape Canaveral to the Ascension Islands measuring the Earth's gravitational pull on the intended trajectory to the launch missiles for NASA for the space program. He asked me about that mission and I could only tell him what I knew which was almost nothing as it was a top secret mission. I did say that my father had sent me postcards from the Ascension Islands. He laughed.

I asked him if he would sign my IBM badge. He said yes! He then asked me for my IBM conference badge. It was one of those non-descript clip badges that had the IBM logo in the left corner and my name typed in bold type, Bill Flannery. He took out his pen and signed it. There are very few times in my unremarkable life that I can remember when someone like Neil Armstrong who gave me a memory that will make me realize how his courage gives us all hope. "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

God Bless all of you.