Neil Armstrong - Legacy

Legacy

Armstrong received many honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy, the Sylvanus Thayer Award, the Collier Trophy from the National Aeronautics Association, and the Congressional Gold Medal. The lunar crater Armstrong, 31 mi (50 km) from the Apollo 11 landing site, and asteroid 6469 Armstrong are named in his honor. Armstrong was also inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame. Armstrong and his Apollo 11 crewmates were the 1999 recipients of the Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution.

Throughout the United States, there are more than a dozen elementary, middle and high schools named in his honor, and many places around the world have streets, buildings, schools, and other places named for Armstrong and/or Apollo. In 1969, folk songwriter and singer John Stewart recorded "Armstrong", a tribute to Armstrong and his first steps on the moon. Purdue University announced in October 2004 that its new engineering building would be named Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering in his honor; the building cost $53.2 million and was dedicated on October 27, 2007, during a ceremony at which Armstrong was joined by fourteen other Purdue Astronauts. In 1971, Armstrong was awarded the Sylvanus Thayer Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point for his service to the country. The Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum is located in his hometown of Wapakoneta, Ohio, although it has no official ties to Armstrong and the airport in New Knoxville where he took his first flying lessons is named for him.

Armstrong's authorized biography, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, was published in 2005. For many years, Armstrong turned down biography offers from authors such as Stephen Ambrose and James A. Michener, but agreed to work with James R. Hansen after reading one of Hansen's other biographies.

In a 2010 Space Foundation survey, Armstrong was ranked as the #1 most popular space hero.

The press often asked Armstrong for his views on the future of spaceflight. In 2005, Armstrong said that a manned mission to Mars will be easier than the lunar challenge of the 1960s: "I suspect that even though the various questions are difficult and many, they are not as difficult and many as those we faced when we started the Apollo in 1961." In 2010, he made a rare public criticism of the decision to cancel the Ares 1 launch vehicle and the Constellation moon landing program. In an open public letter also signed by Apollo veterans Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan, he noted, "For The United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature". Armstrong had also publicly recalled his initial concerns about the Apollo 11 mission, when he had believed there was only a 50% chance of landing on the moon. "I was elated, ecstatic and extremely surprised that we were successful", he later said.

On November 18, 2010, at age eighty, Armstrong said in a speech during the Science & Technology Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, that he would offer his services as commander on a mission to Mars if he were asked.

In September 2012, the U.S. Navy announced that the first Armstrong-class Auxiliary General Oceanographic Research (AGOR) ship will be named "R/V Neil Armstrong". The ship (T-AGOR 27, currently under construction) will be a modern oceanographic research platform capable of supporting a wide range of oceanographic research activities conducted by academic groups.