_One Giant Leap_

I was surprised to find this book on the "New Arrivals" shelf at my local
library; apparently they'd just gotten it in April. _One Giant Leap: Neil
Armstrong's Stellar American Journey_ is a 320-page biography of Neil
Armstrong, by Leon Wagener and published by Tom Doherty Associates. ISBN
0-312-87343-3. Includes index.

IMO, it is well researched. Wagener obviously interviewed a great many
Armstrong family members, old friends, school mates, Navy pals, and business
associates. There does not seem to be any evidence of a direct interview
with Armstrong, and nowhere in the book does it boast of having any official
approval from Neil Armstrong. This does not imply that this is a "hardback
tabloid"; far from it. In fact, this book merely describes the many big and
small events in the man's life, along with quotes from people associated
with them, and nowhere will the reader feel slimy for doing so. It's a
rather positive report, which is a pleasant change. But this is still a
collection of opinions, many of which are not about Armstrong at all, but
about other people of the time.

I did learn several things I did not know before. Armstrong lost a finger
in an accident on his farm a few years ago, though it was successfully
re-attached; that he once flew a Boeing 747; that he visited the North Pole
with Sir Edmund Hillary; that his home in Houston burned in the early
1960's; that when Buzz followed Neil out of the Lunar Module, they decided
to leave the hatch only partially closed in case a leaky valve should
accidentally re-pressurize the LM and seal the hatch permanently shut,
effectively locking them outside. Also included is the text of the speech
written by chief White House speech writer William Safire for President
Nixon to read in the event that Armstrong and Aldrin had died on the lunar
surface.

I did know that Armstrong had lost a daughter and that he and his first wife
had divorced a few years ago, but I did not know that he's since married
another woman. We learn what lines of work his siblings went into, what his
Navy flights in Korea were like, and his college days.

This book did clear up something I've long wondered about: the story about
Neil Armstrong that Chuck Yeager describes in his autobiography. The author
of _One Giant Leap_ writes that of everyone he talked to and in everything
he read, this was the only negative story about Armstrong: that he'd let an
aircraft sink into mud and gotten stuck out at Edwards, with himself and
Yeager inside it. This book reports that said tale is greatly exaggerated,
and quotes someone else as saying that the Yeager story is "sheer nonsense."
Astronaut Gordon Cooper attributed Yeager's attitude to sour grapes, because
Yeager was not selected for the Astronaut Corps.

One thing that this book mentions in a roundabout way is that while
Armstrong served on the commission that investigated the _Challenger_
disaster, it also says that he's on the board of directors at Morton
Thiokol. Now, if I'm not mistaken, that's the manufacturer of the SRB's.
It did not say he was handling both jobs simultaneously; was he? If so,
that would seem to be a conflict of interest (although, to be fair, one
could not be sure of that when the investigation was getting started).

The only teeth-grinding thing I can say against this book is that several
errors grabbed my attention. Some are just typos, such as the redundant
"$5.5 billion dollars" on page 136; a couple of glaring errors in the
transcripts of Neil's first minutes on the lunar surface on page 192 ("I'm
going to step off _Eagle_ now" instead of "I'm going to step off the LEM
now", and "One small step..." instead of "That's one small step..."); and an
editing slip on page 139 that mistakenly says Gemini 2 was the first manned
Gemini flight.

All in all, for we space buffs, it's an interesting couple of hours of
reading. If you're looking for some dirt on Neil Armstrong, don't bother.
Either everyone who's ever known him is part of some Great Conspiracy to say
nothing but good things about him, or he's one of the nicest guys since
Charles Schulz.

Enjoy!

Matt J. McCullar
Arlington, TX

On Sun, 09 May 2004 02:18:14 GMT, "Matt J. McCullar"
wrote:

Armstrong lost a finger in an accident on his farm a few years ago, though it was successfully
re-attached;

....SNL's "Weekend Update" mentioned this as a news item. As a result,
most people think it was a joke and didn't happen, especially since
he's quoted as saying the following at the time of the accident:

"...That's one small step for a man, one giant leap
forYEAAAARRRRRRGH!!!!"



OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

"Matt J. McCullar" wrote in message m...

This book reports that said tale is greatly exaggerated,
and quotes someone else as saying that the Yeager story is "sheer nonsense."
Astronaut Gordon Cooper attributed Yeager's attitude to sour grapes, because
Yeager was not selected for the Astronaut Corps.


Since when did Yeager ever have anything good to say about another
pilot-except his buddies(Hoover/Anderson, etc.) and possibly a few
graduates of his own ARPS? This man brims over with disdain for his
colleagues. Although a great aviator deserving of respect, he would
do well to adopt some of the humility that Mr. Armstrong has so
admirably demonstrated (Can you imagine if Yeager had been first on
the Moon?).
Yeager really cuts up Armstrong about Gemini 8 (in his
autobiography),saying Scott,"...took over, righted that thing,and got
them back safely"!!
This is the kind of slanderous treatment Yeager reserves for any
pilot that dared to fly "Further and Faster" than he did himself (ie:
Crossfield, Mercury 7, etc). His book is full of this stuff.
Yeager could learn a thing or two from Armstrong about conducting
oneself with a little class and self-possession after getting written
up in the history books.

On 10 May 2004, carmine9 wrote :
--------------------------------
Yeager really cuts up Armstrong about Gemini 8 (in his
autobiography),saying Scott,"...took over, righted that thing,and got
them back safely"!!


from THE SUNDAY TIMES
May 09, 2004

Review: Space: Two Sides of the Moon by David Scott and Alexei Leonov
---------------------------------------------------------------------
MARINA BENJAMIN



*TWO SIDES OF THE MOON: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race*
David Scott and Alexei Leonov
Simon & Schuster
pp415



/snip/...Over the years, Leonov and Scott crossed paths several times. In
1973 they met in Moscow to help plan the historic Apollo-Soyuz ?handshake
in space?. But it would be another 20 years before an informal meeting
resulted in their decision to collaborate on this unusual dual
autobiography, which sees them reminisce about their mutual love of
flying, their heady days in the astronaut and cosmonaut corps, and the
people who most influenced their respective space programmes.

With the help of writer Christine Toomey, their recollections have been
intercut to create a dramatic chronological story whose chatty style
gives us a compelling account of a slice of the cold war. It also
succeeds in capturing the adrenaline-fuelled and often reckless drive
towards brinkmanship that characterised the early years of the space
race, leading to many near-disasters.

With refreshing candour, Leonov relates how the EVA, or ?space walk?,
that earned him his ?first? in the history books nearly cost him his
life. His space suit unexpectedly ballooned around him as he floated
outside Voskhod 2 and, unable to re-enter his spacecraft in this
billowed state, he decided to deflate his suit by letting out oxygen. It
was this unauthorised act that saved him: an uncharacteristic show of
individualism by a devoted son of communism.

Scott?s and Neil Armstrong?s travails aboard Gemini 8 are better known.
Indeed it is widely assumed that Armstrong?s ice-cool reactions to a
ship that was spinning out of control at a rate of one turn per second ?
fast enough for a crew to lose consciousness ? won him his coveted place
aboard Apollo 11. Scott, in turn, went on to command Apollo 15, a
complex mission packed with science and geology experiments, becoming
the seventh man to walk on the moon.

Space fans will find much to admire in this book, not least the fact
that it addresses why the Soviets lost ground after beating the
Americans to one milestone after another. To the outside world it looked
as though their programme simply ran out of steam after Leonov?s 1965
Voskhod 2 mission. But according to Leonov, the untimely loss of the
Soviets? mysterious chief designer Sergei Korolev was to blame..../snip/

....more from the review of the book in The Sunday Times :
---------------------------------------------------------

Cosmonaut claims Soviet cover-up on Gagarins death
Tom Walker


THE first man to walk in space claims that Soviet investigators covered up
the real cause of the death of Yuri Gagarin, the worlds first spaceman.

Gagarin became a worldwide hero when he made the first manned space flight
in April 1961. He crashed and died seven years later while taking a MiG
fighter on a routine test.

Rumours soon emerged that he had been drinking. The official investigation
blamed a crash with a hot air balloon.

Now Alexei Leonov, a fellow cosmonaut who achieved his own first by
floating outside a spaceship for 10 minutes in 1965, has revealed that the
official record was tampered with.

Leonov, who was Gagarins best friend, writes in a book of memoirs that he
was training cosmonauts in bad weather about 50 miles from Moscow on March
27, 1968, when he heard two loud booms in the distance, only seconds
apart.

We immediately started discussing what the noise had been, whether it had
been an explosion or the sound of a jet plane exceeding the sound barrier.
My impression was that it had been both, says Leonov.

Back at the Chkalovskoye airbase near Moscow, he discovered that Gagarin
was missing in a MiG-15 with another officer, Vladimir Seregin. Leonov
pinpointed the location of the bangs he had heard, and the wreckage of the
plane was found in a snowbound forest.

Shreds of Yuris flying jacket were recovered, together with small
fragments of flesh. They were placed in a surgical bowl and shown to me. I
cannot describe my feelings. All that remained of that extraordinary man,
whom I had loved as a brother, lay in a metal dish.

An investigation committee was established under the minister of defence
and Leonov was assigned to it. The investigation found that Gagarins plane
had collided with a hot air balloon.

After a while rumours started to circulate. One claimed that Yuri had been
drinking before he flew. Another speculated that he and Seregin had been
taking potshots at wild deer from their plane, causing it to spiral out of
control. Yet another claimed that Yuri was not dead at all, but had been
thrown into prison after tossing a cognac in (President Leonid) Brezhnevs
face. Another had it that he was languishing in a mental asylum. Such
rumours drove me crazy.

Far from being a heavy drinker, Gagarin had been young, fit and, I
suppose, a workaholic, says Leonov.

He and other cosmonauts tried very hard to have the investigation
reopened. But it was 25 years before all the documents concerning the
crash were declassified.

When I studied them carefully I found a document I had written at the
time, describing the 1Å to two-second interval between the two booms I had
heard.

The document had been altered: in handwriting that was not my own the
suppose, a workaholic, says Leonov.

He and other cosmonauts tried very hard to have the investigation
reopened. But it was 25 years before all the documents concerning the
crash were declassified.

When I studied them carefully I found a document I had written at the
time, describing the 1- to two-second interval between the two booms I had
heard.

The document had been altered: in handwriting that was not my own the
interval between the two booms had been changed to 20 seconds.

This was significant, because a new supersonic Sukhoi Su-15 jet had been
in the same area as Gagarins MiG.

According to the flight schedule of that day, the Sukhoi was prohibited
from flying lower than 10,000 metres. I believe now, and believed at the
time, that the accident happened when the pilot of that jet violated the
rules and dipped below the cloud cover for orientation. I believe that
he passed within 10 or 20 metres of Yuris plane while breaking the sound
barrier. The air turbulence created overturned their jet and sent it into
the fatal flat spin.

This would explain the two booms one a sonic bang, the other an explosion
so close together.

Leonov concludes: The investigating committee would never have admitted at
the time that that is what had happened, because it would have meant
admitting that flight controllers were not adequately monitoring the
airspace close to sensitive military installations.


Leonovs book, Two Sides of the Moon, is written with his friend David
Scott, the former American astronaut.

In article ,
Martin Postranecky wrote:

On 10 May 2004, carmine9 wrote :
--------------------------------
Yeager really cuts up Armstrong about Gemini 8 (in his
autobiography),saying Scott,"...took over, righted that thing,and got
them back safely"!!

Jayzus. What was Yeager's big-assed issue with Armstrong, anyway? Still
****ed about him getting stuck in the mud? (and about Yeager sour-graping
over not being picked for the Astronaut Corps -- didn't Yeager scoff
fairly loudly over the "man-in-a-can" concept?)

--
"All over, people changing their votes,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
__________________________________________________ _________________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

While reading in the bathroom on Wed, 12 May 2004 07:13:13 -0400, I
saw that (Mike Flugennock) had written:

Jayzus. What was Yeager's big-assed issue with Armstrong, anyway? Still
****ed about him getting stuck in the mud? (and about Yeager sour-graping
over not being picked for the Astronaut Corps -- didn't Yeager scoff
fairly loudly over the "man-in-a-can" concept?)

Not intending to detract from Yeager's accomplishments but, having
read his autobiography, and after a few other of his subsequent
actions and words, the man has got an ego that is totally
unbelievable. Remember when Yeager (no relation) and Rutan(sp?) flew
the first circumnavigation without refueling? Chucky attempted to
upstage them by setting a meaningless cross-country speed record and
then grousing that they hadn't done anything special.

I guess it's just another reminder that even heros have their foibles.
I just wish his wasn't so unattractive and mean-spirited.


--------------
Beady's Corollary to Occam's Razor: "The likeliest explanation of any phenomenon is almost always the most boring one imaginable."


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On Wed, 12 May 2004 15:35:48 -0400, John Beaderstadt
wrote:

Not intending to detract from Yeager's accomplishments but, having
read his autobiography, and after a few other of his subsequent
actions and words, the man has got an ego that is totally
unbelievable. Remember when Yeager (no relation) and Rutan(sp?) flew
the first circumnavigation without refueling? Chucky attempted to
upstage them by setting a meaningless cross-country speed record and
then grousing that they hadn't done anything special.

I guess it's just another reminder that even heros have their foibles.
I just wish his wasn't so unattractive and mean-spirited.

....There is one thing I've always wondered about Yeager, and that's
whether or not his bluster and self-promotion wasn't more of an act
than how he himself truly is/was. Some of his moments of ego tripping
actually remind me of some of my more "**** you *and* the horse you
sodomized on the way into town!" tirades, especially the ones I truly
didn't mean as anything other than a deliberate chain jerk just to see
who's a whiny little **** and who's got the balls *and* the
intelligence to get the gag for what it is.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Wed, 12 May 2004 21:28:41 -0600, OM
...There is one thing I've always wondered about Yeager, and that's
whether or not his bluster and self-promotion wasn't more of an act
than how he himself truly is/was. Some of his moments of ego tripping
actually remind me of some of my more "**** you *and* the horse you
sodomized on the way into town!" tirades, especially the ones I truly
didn't mean as anything other than a deliberate chain jerk just to see
who's a whiny little **** and who's got the balls *and* the
intelligence to get the gag for what it is.

OM
Enlighten me,please. Just what exactly do you get by dealing with
people that way?

While reading in the bathroom on Sat, 15 May 2004 08:14:01 -0400, I
saw that Joe had written:

Enlighten me,please. Just what exactly do you get by dealing with
people that way?

Another thread, shot to hell.


--------------
Beady's Corollary to Occam's Razor: "The likeliest explanation of any phenomenon is almost always the most boring one imaginable."


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