Armstrong

At the time of writing this I am three days short of completing my fifty-seventh orbit of the sun. So much has happened over those years that the world today is a much different beast to the one I entered. The year I was born saw the first manned space flight when the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin shocked the West, and the USA in particular, by orbiting the Earth. This prompted, or at least accelerated the space race which, just eight years later, culminated in what is arguably man’s greatest achievement, setting foot on another celestial body. The first foot was placed on the moon at 02:56 GMT (as it was known then) on July 21st 1969, though you may see it said that it happened the day before due to the timezone where Mission Control was situated being some six hours behind GMT. Earthly time conventions don’t really work on the moon. Whatever the official date was, it was just a tad before 4am in Huddersfield, England, where I was an impressionable seven year old. I am told that I was woken up to see history in the making on our black and white rented television set. I certainly have memories of it but whether those are of repeated footage or the live event I can’t be sure. Either way, I was, along with virtually the entire population of the planet, utterly captivated by what was happening. One thing in particular made my childhood self exceptionally proud: I shared a christian name with the first man on the moon.

Neil Armstrong’s name is of course well known. Only eleven other men have done what he started and the last of those was in December 1972 when Eugene Cernan mounted the steps of the Lunar Module of the Apollo 17 mission. Had I been christened Eugene I guess I would have been quite proud of that fact too but as a Neil, having that extremely tenuous link with the first gave me bragging rights over, well, no one really but it was important to me. Neil Armstrong would always claim that the first lunar landing was a team effort and many thousands of people should take the credit. Neil Hughes, aged seven and three quarters however, knew it was all down to Neil himself. Armstrong was a great choice as mission commander of Apollo 11 and not just because he was called Neil, though to my mind that was definitely a bonus. He was a brilliant engineer, pilot and astronaut of course, as were all the other Apollo crews, but he had one more quality that his NASA bosses needed: stoicism. This was partly down to his natural introverted nature but also his absolute dedication to the job in hand. On several occasions prior to the Apollo 11 mission he had found himself in situations that were getting out of hand. His ability to keep a cool head when he was within seconds of dying a horrible death was incredible. It proved a handy personality trait on the moon landing mission itself when it was clear that the landing site was not suitable. With fuel rapidly running out he manually flew the lunar module to what appeared a safer area and simply plonked it down there, a little over twenty seconds before the tank ran dry. What a guy. And he was called Neil! On his return to earth Armstrong and his crew, Buzz Aldrin who will forever be known as the second man on the moon, and Michael Collins who is often forgotten as he remained on the command module in orbit round the moon as the other two visited the surface, were rightly feted as heroes. What they had done was expensive, dangerous and done primarily for American pride but let’s be honest here, they landed on the moon. That’s the Moon for goodness’ sake.

So why the sudden interest in those momentous days forty-nine years ago? I went to see the film First Man on Tuesday. This is a biopic of Neil Armstrong covering the years 1962-69. His story prior to that would have been worth a movie in itself but of course this period covered the most momentous years of his life. Spoiler alert: I may give away some of the plot here though in truth we all know he made it to the moon and back. If you are planning on going and wish to avoid the finer detail, give the rest of this paragraph a miss. It starts with Armstrong flying an X-15 experimental plane and nearly dying in the process. Then follows an immense tragedy with Armstrong nursing his toddler daughter Karen who is being treated for a brain tumour. The treatment does not work and Karen dies leaving Armstrong distraught. The film depicts Armstrong haunted by the event throughout the subsequent years after being accepted for the Gemini astronaut program with his first, nearly disastrous spaceflight in Gemini 8 through to him making history on by setting foot on the moon. It plays heavily on the uneasy relationship with his wife Janet and two sons. Throughout the movie death is never far away with colleagues dying in aircraft and the Apollo 1 tragedy where Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee died in the capsule on the launchpad during a system test run. White and Armstrong’s family were particularly close. Neil and Jan’s relationship becomes particularly strained on the eve of his departure for the Apollo 11 mission. Jan has to virtually force Neil to speak to the boys about the risk that he may not return. It is quite a difficult scene to watch when someone you have always assumed to be superhuman is depicted with human failings. Of course he made it to the moon and said those immortal words about it being one small step for man. There was some controversy that the planting of the USA flag was not shown but the Stars and Stripes can clearly be seen in one scene as Armstrong looks back at the landing site from a distance away. Then follows the sad, poignant bit. Armstrong, with tears in his eyes behind the spacesuit visor, opens his gloved hand up to reveal a bracelet bearing Karen’s name. He tosses it over the edge of a crater where it will presumably remain for ever. By all accounts this particular scene is made up. There is no record of Armstrong having taken up any memento of Karen, let alone leaving it on the moon. The time he and Aldrin spent on the lunar surface, just two and a half hours, was all scripted in to the mission. Except – according to one account I’ve read he did spend a minute or so off script at the edge of a nearby crater. We will never know what he was thinking or if indeed he did leave anything there but I guess the film had to make something of his grief over the loss of Karen which had been such an important theme throughout. The film ends with Armstrong back on Earth in isolation trying, and perhaps succeeding in reconnecting with the long-suffering Janet. Their marriage survived for another twenty-one years when they separated, divorcing four years later.

There was much I enjoyed about the movie though I did leave with one or two reservations. I was a tad uneasy with Ryan Gosling’s depiction of Armstrong. Armstrong’s utter dedication to the job would have certainly affected his relationship with Janet and his boys but I’m not sure it would have been quite as strained as the film made out. Armstrong came across as a somewhat selfish character, mitigated by the bottling up of the undoubted grief of Karen’s death. Had the build up to the mission and the moon landing itself taken place in the 2010s then this would have been entirely believable. It happened in the sixties, however. People were different back then. In subtle ways, perhaps, but emphasis has changed. Armstrong would have certainly been devastated by the loss of Karen and her death would have haunted him until the day he died. His dedication to the job, however, would have been set in stone long before the dark day’s of Karen’s illness. His professionalism would have almost certainly precluded him from shedding tears for Karen on the moon and most likely the depositing of the bracelet as depicted by the film. It is also unlikely that Janet would have been as critical of her husband’s lack of communication. Back then it was the norm that the husband went to work and the wife looked after the home and kids. Of course Janet had the extra worry that Neil was in a job in which there was a real possibility that he might not come home but even so my guess is that she supported Neil both publicly and privately no matter how frustrated she felt. That there was frustration and no little fear there is not up for debate though. Men back then rarely showed emotion and, more importantly, were not expected to. Having said all that the film certainly presented the action in a dramatic way and was beautifully filmed. For the most part it was technically accurate. The director took a couple of liberties for dramatic reasons – there were twenty seconds of fuel left when Armstrong landed the lunar module, not two as depicted, and for the fatal fire on Apollo 1 we see it contained in the capsule when in fact it spread out so much a number of the ground personnel were injured attempting to get to the hatch – but overall the film was an accurate portrayal the space program. It captured what for most of us would have been the sheer terror of being strapped inside a tiny metal box whilst the incredible violence of the launch is going on all around. I’ll never be sure if the scenes on the moon were anything like reality, not without going there myself at least, but to me they had the feel of what it must have been like.

Personally, I think the film Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks remains the ultimate space docudrama but maybe that is just the science nerd in me. Much as I enjoyed First Man it could not compete with the drama of the Apollo 13 and the race against time to find a way of getting the astronauts home. As with First Man everyone knew the ending of course but the movie still managed to have the audience on the edge of their seats. Perhaps my reservation about First Man is a personal thing. Armstrong has always been a hero of mine. Just maybe there is still a seven and three quarter year old boy inside me that believes that by virtue of our shared christian name, Neil Armstrong and Neil  Hughes have some kind of bond. That boy would not want to see his hero depicted as the brilliant yet flawed character we saw in the film. No, to that seven and three quarter year old boy, Armstrong was the perfect Neil.