Neil Armstrong, the astronaut who marked an epochal achievement in exploration with “one small step” from the Apollo 11 lunar module on July 20, 1969, becoming the first person to walk on the moon, died Aug. 25 in the Cincinnati area. He was 82. 
 
 His family announced the death in a statement and attributed it to “complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.” 
 
 A taciturn engineer and test pilot who was never at ease with his fame, Mr. Armstrong was among the most heroized Americans of the 1960s Cold War space race. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” he is famous for saying as he stepped on the moon, an indelible quotation beamed to a worldwide audience in the hundreds of millions. 
 
 Twelve years after the Soviet satellite Sputnik reached space first, deeply alarming U.S. officials, and after President John F. Kennedy in 1961 declared it a national priority to land an American on the moon “before this decade is out,” Mr. Armstrong, a former Navy fighter pilot, commanded the NASA crew that finished the job. 
 
 His trip to the moon — particularly the hair-raising final descent from lunar orbit to the treacherous surface — was history’s boldest feat of aviation. Yet what the experience meant to him, what he thought of it all on an emotional level, he mostly kept to himself. 
 
 Like his boyhood idol, transatlantic aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, Mr. Armstrong learned how uncomfortable the intrusion of global acclaim can be. And just as Lindbergh had done, he eventually shied away from the public and avoided the popular media. 
 
 In time, he became almost mythical. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong was “exceedingly circumspect” from a young age, and the glare of international attention “just deepened a personality trait that he already had in spades,” said his authorized biographer, James R. Hansen, a former NASA historian. 
 
 In an interview, Hansen, author of “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong,” cited another “special sensitivity” that made the first man on the moon a stranger on Earth. 
 
 “I think Neil knew that this glorious thing he helped achieve for the country back in the summer of 1969 — glorious for the entire planet, really — would inexorably be diminished by the blatant commercialism of the modern world,” Hansen said. 
 
 “And I think it’s a nobility of his character that he just would not take part in that.” 
 
 A love of flying 
 
 The perilous, 195-hour journey that defined Mr. Armstrong’s place in history — from the liftoff of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969, to the capsule’s splashdown in the Pacific eight days later — riveted the world’s attention, transcending cultural, political and generational divides in an era of profound social tumult and change in the United States. 
 
 As Mr. Armstrong, a civilian, and his crewmates, Air Force pilots Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. and Michael Collins, hurtled through space, television viewers around the globe witnessed a drama of spellbinding technology and daring. About a half-billion people listened to the climactic landing and watched a flickering video feed of the moonwalk. 
 
 At center stage, cool and focused, was a pragmatic, 38-year-old astronaut who would let social critics and spiritual wise men dither over the larger meaning of his voyage. When Mr. Armstrong occasionally spoke publicly about the mission in later decades, he usually did so dryly, his recollections mainly operational. 
 
 “I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer,” he said at a millennial gathering honoring the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century. Unlike Aldrin and Collins, Mr. Armstrong never published a memoir. 
 
 After flying experimental rocket planes in the 1950s at Edwards Air Force Base in California — the high-desert realm of daredevil test pilots later celebrated in author Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” — Mr. Armstrong was selected for NASA’s astronaut corps in 1962 and became the first U.S. civilian to be blasted into space. 
 
 In 1966, during his only spaceflight other than Apollo 11, a life-threatening malfunction of his Gemini 8 vehicle caused the craft to tumble out of control in Earth orbit. It was the nation’s first potentially fatal crisis in space, prompting Mr. Armstrong and his crewmate to abort their mission and carry out NASA’s first emergency reentry. 
 
 His skill and composure were put to no greater test, though, than in the anxious minutes starting at 4:05 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, July 20, 1969. That was when the lunar module carrying Mr. Armstrong and Aldrin, having separated from the Apollo 11 capsule, began its hazardous, nine-mile final descent to the moon’s Sea of Tranquility. 
 
 Collins, waiting in lunar orbit, could only hope that the two would make it back. 
 
 The lunar module, or LM (pronounced lem), was dubbed “Eagle.” Its 1969 computer, overtaxed during the descent and flashing alarm lights as it fell behind on its work, guided the spiderlike craft most of the way to the surface. 
 
 In the last few thousand feet, however, Mr. Armstrong, looking out a window, saw that the computer had piloted Eagle beyond its targeted landing spot. The craft was headed for a massive crater surrounded by boulders as big as cars. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong, as planned, took manual control of the LM at 500 feet. Standing in the cramped cockpit, piloting with a control stick and toggle switch, he maneuvered past the crater while scanning the rugged moonscape for a place to safely put down. 
 
 Although the world remembers him best for walking on the moon, Mr. Armstrong recalled his time on the surface as anticlimactic, “something we looked on as reasonably safe and predictable.” Flying the LM was “by far the most difficult and challenging part” of the mission, he told a group of youngsters in a 2007 e-mail exchange. 
 
 The “very high risk” descent was “extremely complex,” he wrote, and guiding the craft gave him a “feeling of elation.” 
 
 “Pilots take no particular joy in walking,” he once remarked. “Pilots like flying.” 
 
 ‘One giant leap’ 
 
 As he and Aldrin kept descending, balanced on a cone of fire 240,000 miles from Earth, the LM’s roaring engine kicked up a fog of moon dust, distorting Mr. Armstrong’s depth perception and clouding his view of the surface. 
 
 Meanwhile, the descent engine’s fuel — separate from the fuel that would later power the ascent engine on their departure from the moon — dwindled to a critical level. 
 
 “Quantity light,” Aldrin warned at just under 100 feet. This meant that Mr. Armstrong, according to NASA’s instruments, had less than two minutes to ease the LM to the surface or he would have faced a frightful dilemma. 
 
 He would have had to abort the descent, ending the mission in failure at a cost of immense national prestige and treasure, or he would have had to risk a sort of crash landing after the fuel ran out — letting the LM fall in lunar gravity the rest of the way down, hoping the slow-motion plunge wouldn’t badly damage it. 
 
 Finally, with 50 seconds to spare, the world heard Aldrin say, “Contact light,” and Eagle’s landing gear settled on the lunar soil. Their precarious, 12-minute descent into the unknown left Mr. Armstrong’s pulse pounding at twice the normal rate. 
 
 Humanity listened, transfixed. “Houston, Tranquility base here,” Mr. Armstrong reported. “The Eagle has landed.” The response from mission control was filled with relief: “Roger, Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.” 
 
 About 61 / 2 hours later, Mr. Armstrong, soon to be followed by Aldrin, climbed down the ladder outside the LM’s hatch as a television camera mounted on the craft transmitted his shadowy, black-and-white image to hundreds of millions of viewers. 
 
 How Mr. Armstrong wound up commanding the historic flight had to do with his abilities and experience, plus a measure of good fortune. 
 
 Months earlier, when he had been named Apollo 11 commander, NASA envisioned his mission as the first lunar landing — yet no one could be sure. Three other Apollo flights had to finish preparing the way. If any of them had failed, Apollo 11 would have had to pick up the slack, leaving the momentous first landing to a later crew. 
 
 Why the space agency chose Mr. Armstrong, not Aldrin, for the famous first step out of the LM had to do with the two men’s personalities. 
 
 Publicly, NASA said the first-step decision was a technical one dictated by where the astronauts would be positioned in the LM’s small cockpit. But in his 2001 autobiography, Christopher C. Kraft Jr., a top NASA flight official, confirmed the true reason. 
 
 Aldrin, who would struggle with alcoholism and depression after his astronaut career, was overtly opinionated and ambitious, making it clear within NASA why he thought he should be first. “Did we think Buzz was the man who would be our best representative to the world, the man who would be legend?” Kraft recalled. “We didn’t.” 
 
 The stoic Mr. Armstrong, on the other hand, quietly held to his belief that the descent and landing, not the moonwalk, would be the mission’s signature achievement. And it didn’t matter to him whether the Earthbound masses thought differently. 
 
 “Neil Armstrong, reticent, soft-spoken and heroic, was our only choice,” Kraft said. 
 
 As for his famous statement upon stepping off the ladder, Mr. Armstrong said he didn’t dwell on it much beforehand, that the idea came to him only after the landing. 
 
 He would always maintain that he had planned to say “a man.” Whether the “a” was lost in transmission or Mr. Armstrong misspoke has never been fully resolved. As his boots touched the lunar surface at 10:56:15 p.m. Eastern, the world heard: 
 
 “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” 
 
 Ever the precise engineer, Mr. Armstrong later said that if it were up to him, history would record his immortal words with an “a” inserted in parentheses. 
 
 The ultimate mission 
 
 Neil Alden Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, outside the little farming town of Wapakoneta in western Ohio. From the morning in 1936 when his father, an auditor of county records, let him skip Sunday school so the two could go aloft in a barnstorming Ford Trimotor plane near their home, the boy was hooked on aviation. 
 
 He got his pilot’s license on his 16th birthday, before he was legally old enough to go solo in an automobile. 
 
 After a few semesters at Purdue University, he left for Navy flight training in 1949, eventually becoming the youngest pilot in his fighter squadron on the aircraft carrier USS Essex. He flew 78 combat missions in the Korean War and was shot down once before his tour of duty ended and he went back to Purdue. 
 
 After earning an aeronautical engineering degree in 1955, he joined NASA’s forerunner, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and was soon rocketing in the stratosphere, pushing the boundaries of aviation in ­missilelike research planes. 
 
 In 1959, at the beginning of the Mercury project, which would soon blast the first American into space, NASA chose its storied “original seven” astronauts from the ranks of active-duty military fliers. Mr. Armstrong, who was less than enthusiastic about the program, remained at Edwards as a civilian test pilot. 
 
 Then, in 1962, his 2-year-old daughter, Karen, died of brain cancer. Mr. Armstrong’s grief “caused him to invest [his] energies in something very positive,” his sister recalled in an interview with Hansen. “That’s when he started into the space program.” 
 
 Not long after Karen’s death, when NASA recruited its second group of astronauts, about 250 test pilots applied, and Mr. Armstrong was among the nine who made the cut. Most took part in the Earth- 
 
 orbiting Gemini missions of the mid-1960s, refining flight procedures that would be needed later in the moon-bound Apollo program. 
 
 Mr. Armstrong’s harrowing Gemini 8 flight, in March 1966, was aborted hours into its three-day schedule after the spacecraft began toppling end-over-end, pinwheeling so violently that Mr. Armstrong, the commander, and crewmate David Scott were in danger of blacking out, which almost surely would have been fatal. 
 
 A malfunctioning thruster was the culprit. “I gotta cage my eyeballs,” Mr. Armstrong remarked, deadpan, as he and Scott, their vision blurred, struggled to cut short their flight. NASA officials were impressed by Mr. Armstrong’s handling of the crisis, and three years later they entrusted him with command of the ultimate mission. 
 
 A very private life 
 
 After weeks of hoopla surrounding Apollo 11’s return — a ticker-tape parade, a presidential dinner, a 28-city global goodwill tour — Mr. Armstrong worked in NASA management for two years, then joined the University of Cincinnati’s engineering faculty. 
 
 “We were not naive, but we could not have guessed what the volume and intensity of public interest would turn out to be,” he said of his worldwide celebrity. 
 
 Over the ensuing decades, Mr. Armstrong, a solitary figure, warded off reporters’ efforts to penetrate his privacy until most gave up or lost interest. Unhappy with faculty unionism, he resigned from the university in 1979 and spent the rest of his working life in business, amassing personal wealth as an investor and a member of corporate boards. 
 
 Although he was loath to exploit his fame, Mr. Armstrong signed on as a pitchman for Chrysler in his waning months as a professor, appearing in ads for the nearly bankrupt automaker, including one that aired during the Super Bowl in January 1979. 
 
 He said he agreed to the deal mainly because it involved an engineering consultancy and because he wanted to help a beleaguered U.S. company buffeted by imports and rising foreign oil prices. The arrangement was short-lived, however, and afterward Mr. Armstrong repeatedly turned down opportunities to endorse products. 
 
 Hansen, now an aerospace historian at Auburn University, said Mr. Armstrong felt awkward taking credit for the collective success of 400,000 employees of the space agency and its Apollo contractors. In 2003, Hansen recorded 55 hours of interviews with Mr. Armstrong after years of coaxing him to cooperate on a biography. 
 
 He was not a recluse, as some labeled him. In 1986, for instance, he was vice chairman of the commission that investigated the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. 
 
 But that was a rare step into the spotlight. As a rule, Mr. Armstrong was extremely choosey about his public appearances, limiting them mostly to aerospace-related commemorative events and to other usually low-key gatherings that piqued his interest, such as meetings of scientific and technical societies. 
 
 “The lunar Lindbergh,” he was dubbed for his refusal to grant interviews to journalists. His remoteness also irked some NASA officials, who had vainly hoped that Mr. Armstrong would become a forceful public advocate for the funding of space exploration. 
 
 “How long must it take before I can cease to be known as a spaceman?” he once pleaded. Yet by the time he retired in 2002, to leisurely travel and enjoy his grandchildren, the “First Man” finally had outlived the nation’s fascination with him, and he could often walk down a street in blissful anonymity. 
 
 His 38-year marriage to the former Janet Shearon ended in divorce in 1994. Later that year, he married Carol Knight, a widowed mother of two teenagers. Besides his wife, survivors include two sons from his first marriage, Eric and Mark; two stepchildren; a brother; a sister; and 10 grandchildren. 
 
 “Looking back, we were really very privileged to live in that thin slice of history where we changed how man looks at himself, and what he might become, and where he might go,” Mr. Armstrong said in a 2001 NASA oral history project. “So I’m very thankful.” ||||| Neil Armstrong was a quiet, self-described "nerdy" engineer who became a global hero when as a steely-nerved U.S. pilot he made "one giant leap for mankind" with the first step on the moon. The modest man who entranced and awed people on Earth has died. He was 82. 
 
 FILE - In this May 12 ,2012 file photo, former astronaut Neil Armstrong testifies before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on NASA's proposed budget and the future... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Monday, Feb. 20, 2012, file photo provided by NASA, Apollo 11 Astronaut Neil Armstrong speaks at a celebration dinner honoring John Glenn in Columbus, Ohio. The family of Neil Armstrong,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this 1969 photo provided by NASA the crew of the Apollo 11 mission is seen. From left are Neil Armstrong, Mission Commander, Michael Collins, Lt. Col. USAF, and Edwin Eugene Aldrin, also known... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this July 16, 1969 file photo, Neil Armstrong waving in front, heads for the van that will take the crew to the rocket for launch to the moon at Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida.... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this March 9, 1966 file photo, Astronaut Neil Armstrong is seated during a suiting up exercise Cape Kennedy, Florida, in preparation for the Gemini 8 flight. The family of Neil Armstrong, the... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this July 20, 1969 file photo provided by NASA shows Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, the first men to land on the moon, plant the U.S. flag on the lunar surface.... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In undated photo provided by NASA shows Neil Armstrong. The family of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, says he has died at age 82. A statement from the family says he died following... (Associated Press) 
 
 Armstrong died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, a statement from his family said Saturday. It didn't say where or when he died. 
 
 Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century's scientific expeditions. His first words after setting foot on the surface are etched in history books and in the memories of those who heard them in a live broadcast. 
 
 "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," Armstrong said. 
 
 In those first few moments on the moon, during the climax of a heated space race with the then-Soviet Union, Armstrong stopped in what he called "a tender moment" and left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action. 
 
 "It was special and memorable, but it was only instantaneous because there was work to do," Armstrong told an Australian television interviewer this year. 
 
 Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs. 
 
 "The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to," Armstrong once said. 
 
 The moonwalk marked America's victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1, a satellite that sent shock waves around the world. 
 
 An estimated 600 million people _ a fifth of the world's population _ watched and listened to the moon landing, the largest audience for any single event in history. 
 
 Parents huddled with their children in front of the family television, mesmerized. Farmers abandoned their nightly milking duties, and motorists pulled off the highway and checked into motels just to watch on TV. 
 
 The U.S. space agency tweeted Saturday, "NASA offers its condolences on today's passing of Neil Armstrong, former test pilot, astronaut & the 1st man on the moon. Neil was 82." 
 
 Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA's forerunner and an astronaut, Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamour of the space program. 
 
 "I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer," he said in February 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. "And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession." 
 
 A man who kept away from cameras, Armstrong went public in 2010 with his concerns about President Barack Obama's space policy that shifted attention away from a return to the moon and emphasized private companies developing spaceships. He testified before Congress, and in an email to The Associated Press he said he had "substantial reservations." 
 
 Armstrong's modesty and self-effacing manner never faded. 
 
 When he appeared in Dayton, Ohio, in 2003 to help celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight, he bounded onto a stage before 10,000 people. But he spoke for only a few seconds, did not mention the moon and quickly ducked out of the spotlight. 
 
 He later joined former astronaut and Sen. John Glenn to lay wreaths on the graves of airplane inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright. Glenn introduced Armstrong and noted it was 34 years to the day that Armstrong had walked on the moon. 
 
 "Thank you, John. Thirty-four years?" Armstrong quipped, as if he hadn't given it a thought. 
 
 At another joint appearance, the two embraced and Glenn commented: "To this day, he's the one person on Earth, I'm truly, truly envious of." 
 
 Armstrong's moonwalk capped a series of accomplishments that included piloting the X-15 rocket plane and making the first space docking during the Gemini 8 mission, which included a successful emergency splashdown. 
 
 In the years afterward, Armstrong retreated to the quiet of the classroom and his Ohio farm. Aldrin said in his book "Men from Earth" that Armstrong was one of the quietest, most private men he had ever met. 
 
 In the Australian interview, Armstrong acknowledged that "now and then I miss the excitement about being in the cockpit of an airplane and doing new things." 
 
 At the time of the flight's 40th anniversary, Armstrong again was low-key, telling a gathering that the space race was "the ultimate peaceful competition: USA versus U.S.S.R. It did allow both sides to take the high road, with the objectives of science and learning and exploration." 
 
 Glenn, who went through jungle training in Panama with Armstrong as part of the astronaut program, described him as "exceptionally brilliant" with technical matters but "rather retiring, doesn't like to be thrust into the limelight much." 
 
 Derek Elliott, curator of the Smithsonian Institution's U.S. Air and Space Museum from 1982 to 1992, said the moonwalk probably marked the high point of space exploration. 
 
 "The fact that we were able to see it and be a part of it means that we are in our own way witnesses to history," he said. 
 
 The 1969 landing met an audacious deadline that President John F. Kennedy had set in May 1961, shortly after Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a 15-minute suborbital flight. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri A. Gagarin had orbited the Earth and beaten the U.S. into space the previous month. 
 
 "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth," Kennedy had said. "No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important to the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." 
 
 The end-of-decade goal was met with more than five months to spare. "Houston: Tranquility Base here," Armstrong radioed after the spacecraft settled onto the moon. "The Eagle has landed." 
 
 "Roger, Tranquility," the Houston staffer radioed back. "We copy you on the ground. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot." 
 
 The third astronaut on the mission, Michael Collins, circled the moon in the mother ship Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin went to the moon's surface. 
 
 In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon between 1969 and the last moon mission in 1972. 
 
 For Americans, reaching the moon provided uplift and respite from the Vietnam War. The landing occurred as organizers were preparing for Woodstock, the legendary rock festival on a farm in New York. 
 
 Armstrong was born Aug. 5, 1930, on a farm in Ohio. He took his first airplane ride at age 6 and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's license. 
 
 Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea. After the war, Armstrong finished his degree and later earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets. 
 
 Armstrong was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962 _ the first, including Glenn, was chosen in 1959 _ and commanded the Gemini 8 mission in 1966. After the first space docking, he brought the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit. 
 
 Armstrong was backup commander for the historic Apollo 8 mission at Christmastime in 1968. In that flight, Commander Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell and Bill Anders circled the moon 10 times, and paving the way for the lunar landing seven months later. 
 
 Aldrin said he and Armstrong were not prone to free exchanges of sentiment. 
 
 "But there was that moment on the moon, a brief moment, in which we sort of looked at each other and slapped each other on the shoulder ... and said, `We made it. Good show,' or something like that," Aldrin said. 
 
 In Wapakoneta, media and souvenir frenzy was swirling around the home of Armstrong's parents. 
 
 "You couldn't see the house for the news media," recalled John Zwez, former manager of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum. "People were pulling grass out of their front yard." 
 
 Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were given ticker tape parades in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and later made a 22-nation world tour. A homecoming in Wapakoneta drew 50,000 people to the city of 9,000. 
 
 In 1970, Armstrong was appointed deputy associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA but left the following year to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. 
 
 He remained there until 1979 and during that time bought a farm, where he raised cattle and corn. He stayed out of public view, accepting few requests for interviews or speeches. 
 
 "He didn't give interviews, but he wasn't a strange person or hard to talk to," said Ron Huston, a colleague at the University of Cincinnati. "He just didn't like being a novelty." 
 
 In February 2000, when he agreed to announce the top 20 engineering achievements of the 20th century as voted by the National Academy of Engineering, Armstrong said there was one disappointment relating to his moonwalk. 
 
 "I can honestly say _ and it's a big surprise to me _ that I have never had a dream about being on the moon," he said. 
 
 Armstrong married Carol Knight in 1999. He had two adult sons from a previous marriage. 
 
 His family's statement Saturday made a simple request for anyone who wanted to remember him: 
 
 "Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Borenstein reported from Washington. ||||| Former US astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, has died at the age of 82, his family said Saturday. 
 
 Armstrong underwent a heart-bypass surgery earlier this month, just two days after his birthday on August 5, to relieve blocked coronary arteries. 
 
 As commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. As he stepped on the dusty surface, Armstrong said: "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." 
 
 Those words endure as one of the best known quotes in the English language. 
 
 Neil Alden Armstrong was 38 years old at the time, and even though he had fulfilled one of mankind's quests that had loomed for centuries and placed him at the pinnacle of human achievement, he did not revel in his accomplishment. He even seemed frustrated by the acclaim it brought. 
 
 "I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks but for the ledger of our daily work," Armstrong said in an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes program in 2005. 
 
 He once was asked how he felt knowing his footprints would likely stay on the moon's surface for thousands of years. "I kind of hope that somebody goes up there one of these days and cleans them up," he said. 
 
 James Hansen, author of First Man: The Life of Neil A Armstrong, told CBS: "All of the attention that ... the public put on stepping down that ladder onto the surface itself, Neil never could really understand why there was so much focus on that." 
 
 The Apollo 11 moon mission turned out to be Armstrong's last space flight. The next year he was appointed to a desk job, being named Nasa's deputy associate administrator for aeronautics in the office of advanced research and technology. 
 
 Armstrong's post-Nasa life was a very private one. He took no major role in ceremonies marking the 25th anniversary of the moon landing. "He's a recluse's recluse," said Dave Garrett, a former NASA spokesman. "Howard Hughes had nothing on him," he said, speaking of the reclusive aviator. 
 
 Hansen said stories of Armstrong dreaming of space exploration as a boy were apocryphal, although he was long dedicated to flight. "His life was about flying. His life was about piloting," Hansen said. 
 
 He left NASA a year after Apollo 11 to become a professor of engineering at the University of Cincinnati. 
 
 The former astronaut lived in the Cincinnati area with his wife, Carol. 
 
 "We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures," the family said in a statement. "Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend. ||||| Americans bid farewell Thursday to Neil Armstrong, the first man to take a giant leap on to the moon. 
 
 Carol Armstrong, center, her son, Eric, right, and daughter Molly Van Wagenen hold their hands to their hearts during a memorial service celebrating the life of Neil Armstrong at the Washington National... (Associated Press) 
 
 Angus Sutherland of Kelso, Scotland plays the bagpipe during a memorial service for Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, at the National Cathedral in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan... (Associated Press) 
 
 Singer Diana Krall holds hands with astronaut, and former Ohio Sen. John Glenn during a memorial service for Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong, Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012, at the National Cathedral in... (Associated Press) 
 
 Former astronauts Buzz Aldrin, center, Annie Glenn, and her husband, astronaut, and former Ohio Sen. Sen. John Glenn, second from right, take part in a memorial service for Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Apollo 17 mission commander Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, looks skyward during a memorial service celebrating the life of Neil Armstrong at the Washington National Cathedral, Thursday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 The powerful of Washington, the pioneers of space, and the everyday public crowded into the Washington National Cathedral for a public interfaith memorial for the very private astronaut. 
 
 Armstrong, who died last month in Ohio at age 82, walked on the moon in July 1969. 
 
 "He's now slipped the bonds of Earth once again, but what a legacy he left," former Treasury Secretary John Snow told the gathering. 
 
 Apollo 11 crewmates Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins and Mercury astronaut John Glenn and about two dozen members of Congress were among the estimated 1,500 people in the cavernous cathedral. A moon rock that the Apollo 11 astronauts gave the church in 1974 is embedded in one of its stained glass windows. 
 
 "You have now shown once again the pathway to the stars," Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon said in a tribute to Armstrong. "As you soar through the heavens beyond even where eagles dare to go, you can now finally put out your hand and touch the face of God." 
 
 Cernan was followed by a slow and solemn version of the song "Fly Me to the Moon" by singer Diana Krall. The service also included excerpts from a speech 50 years ago by John F. Kennedy in which he said America chose to send men to the moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard. The scratchy recording of the young president said going to the moon was a goal that "will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone." 
 
 Shortly after that speech in 1961 at Rice University, Armstrong, not yet an astronaut but always a gifted engineer, was already working on how to land a spaceship on the moon, NASA administrator Charles Bolden recalled. Snow talked of the 12-year-old Armstrong who built a wind tunnel. But most of Armstrong's friends and colleagues spent time remembering the humble Armstrong. Snow called him a "regular guy" and "the most reluctant of heroes." 
 
 NASA administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, said Armstrong's humility and courage "lifted him above the stars." Bolden read a letter from President Barack Obama saying, "the imprint he left on the surface of the moon is matched only by the extraordinary mark he left on ordinary Americans." 
 
 Armstrong commanded the historic landing of the Apollo 11 spacecraft on the moon July 20, 1969. His first words after stepping onto the moon are etched in history books: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong insisted later that he had said "a" before man, but said he, too, couldn't hear it in the recorded version. 
 
 Armstrong and Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface and left behind a plaque that read: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." 
 
 In all, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon before the last moon mission in 1972. 
 
 Armstrong was a U.S. Navy aviator. He joined NASA's predecessor agency in 1955 as a civilian test pilot and later, as an astronaut, flew first in Gemini 8 in 1966. After the moon landing he spent a year in Washington as a top official at the space agency, but then he left NASA to teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He later was chairman of two electronics companies, but mostly kept out of the public eye. 
 
 A private service was held earlier in suburban Cincinnati for Armstrong, who will be buried at sea. ||||| Like space flight, filmmaking is created to take people beyond what they already know to see what they don’t. With stunning realism and detail, the astronaut blockbuster “First Man” does just that. It shows us the commitment, traumas and almost insurmountable challenges of the most dangerous missions ever attempted. 
 
 After successes in entirely different arenas with the tense music school drama “Whiplash” and the symphonic love story “La La Land,” director Damien Chazelle has created another remarkable adventure. With tremendous personal insight, it re-creates the story of Neil Armstrong, who commanded 1969’s Apollo 11 lunar landing and made the first human footprint on the moon. 
 
 Ryan Gosling portrays Armstrong as a strong, silent, no-nonsense workaholic, in a deeply internal performance that digs down to the man’s bone marrow. From his origin as a test pilot, through his years of training as NASA’s first civilian astronaut candidate, we see him as a man who reacts to endless work and near-disaster setbacks with spartan stoicism. Stresses that would drive most people to exhaustion and burnout powered Armstrong. 
 
 While other names from NASA history appear in the film, notably Corey Stoll as fellow Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Kyle Chandler as spaceman turned administrator Deke Slayton, Gosling’s Armstrong is something of a lone wolf. Aldrin tells jokes at press conferences; Armstrong remains aloof. He’s even an arm’s length away from his wife, Janet (Claire Foy of “The Crown,” who’s excellent), and their two young boys. 
 
 The only moments we see Armstrong relaxed are when he thinks of his daughter Karen, who died in 1968, less than 3 years old, of brain cancer. The little girl’s death is undeniably a tragedy that made him suffer deep anguish, but not a thing he could express openly. Gosling, who is as revealing in suggestive silence as he is in energetic dialogue, handles Armstrong’s terse personality with unspoken understanding. 
 
 As the spirited Janet, Foy is more demonstrative. She offers a key to understanding what brought these two forceful personalities together and kept them united when it was clear that space flight might make her a widow. 
 
 First Man ★★★★ out of 4 stars Rating: PG-13 for some thematic content involving peril, and brief strong language. 
 
 In parts, this is familiar ground. The space race of the 1960s, with the United States working full speed to surpass the Soviet Union’s early lead into orbit, has already given us two suitably epic fact-based feature films: Philip Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff,” which Tom Wolfe adapted from his bestseller, and Ron Howard’s “Apollo 13.” 
 
 “First Man” repeats some commonplace details but takes the saga further. It adds to the story’s bravery and horrific accidents a sense of emotional intimacy to the people committed to the program. It has, in its narrative, deep-space destinations. 
 
 The film is a masterpiece of visual design and sound engineering, making viewers feel as if they are right there in the shuddering rocket as it pushes itself beyond gravity or uncontrollably rotating as an accidental thruster blast makes it a violent hyper-speed gyroscope. Its stark imagery of the moon’s endless gray isolation is haunting. 
 
 But the movie’s real achievement comes through the moments in the Armstrong home. So much is expressed through so little being said. Perhaps the most outstanding scene comes when he packs to leave for the moon mission without telling his two boys that their daddy might not be coming back. It’s amplified by a parallel passage where Ciarán Hinds, playing space center director Robert Gilruth, reads a solemn eulogy prepared for the president to present if the nation’s goals and dreams only yield two lifeless men on a distant rock. 
 
 The film has earned some detractors’ criticism by neglecting to show the American flag being planted on the moon. That specific moment isn’t needed for “First Man” to stir patriotic feelings. It features President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 challenge for the nation to send humans to the moon and safely back: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” 
 
 The film shows how hard it was to develop the program that enabled us to travel that amazing long road, what it cost in terms of funding and heroism and lives. In that moving context, waving a banner seems superfluous. 
 
 Twitter: @colincovert ||||| As the first person to walk on the moon, he is a man whose name will be remembered for generations to come. But one of the other well-known things about Neil Armstrong is that he hardly ever gives interviews. 
 
 It was therefore something of a coup for Alex Malley, chief executive of Certified Practicing Accountants of Australia, to secure almost an hour of Armstrong's time to discuss the astronaut's trip to the moon. 
 
 In the illuminating conversation posted online on the CPA Australia website, Armstrong revealed how he thought his mission, Apollo 11, only had a 50% chance of landing safely on the moon's surface and said it was "sad" that the current US government's ambitions for Nasa were so reduced compared with the achievements of the 1960s. 
 
 "Nasa has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve," said Armstrong. "It's sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people." 
 
 As a child, Armstrong said he had "become fascinated with the world of flight, as an elementary school student, and determined that, somehow, I wanted to be involved in that." 
 
 He served as a fighter pilot in the Korean war and was working as a test pilot when President John F Kennedy issued his challenge to the country's scientists to land on the moon. "We choose to go the moon and these other things," said Kennedy to an audience at Rice University in 1962, "not because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win." 
 
 At the time, the US had only managed to send Alan Sheppard 100 miles above the surface of the Earth for 20 minutes. "Now the president was challenging us to go to the moon," said Armstrong. "The gap between a 20 minutes up and down flight and going to the moon was something almost beyond belief, technically." 
 
 Over the course of the following decade, each Apollo mission was used to test different parts of the propulsion, navigation and communication technology required on a journey to the moon. 
 
 "A month before the launch of Apollo 11, we decided we were confident enough we could try and attempt on a descent to the surface," said Armstrong. "I thought we had a 90% chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt. There are so many unknowns on that descent from lunar orbit down to the surface that had not been demonstrated yet by testing and there was a big chance that there was something in there we didn't understand properly and we had to abort and come back to Earth without landing." 
 
 When Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their descent aboard the Eagle to the moon's surface, the on-board computer had intended to put them down on the side of a large crater with steep slopes littered with huge boulders. "Not a good place to land at all," said Armstrong. "I took it over manually and flew it like a helicopter out to the west direction, took it to a smoother area without so many rocks and found a level area and was able to get it down there before we ran out of fuel. There was something like 20 seconds of fuel left." 
 
 Once the astronauts had reached the surface and he had muttered his immortal line, "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", Armstrong said there was too much work to do to spend too long meditating or reflecting on where he was. 
 
 In the years since his legendary mission, Armstrong has watched Nasa's position and ambitions erode. "I'm substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency, which are directed by the administration," he said. "We have a situation in the states where the White House and the Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be and they're playing a game and Nasa is the shuttlecock they're hitting back and forth as both sides try to get Nasa on the proper path." 
 
 So how did Malley, who was clearly in awe of Armstrong during the interview, manage to land his exclusive? "I know something not a lot of people know about Neil Armstrong – his dad was an auditor," he said. "For people who are leaders or aspire to be leaders, listening to Neil Armstrong is far better than doing any educational MBA programme that exists in the world today."
– A sample of the early coverage/reaction in the wake of Neil Armstrong's death today at age 82: Huffington Post: Its page-leading banner reads, "One Giant Loss for Mankind." Armstrong family: "The next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.” Associated Press: He was a "quiet, self-described 'nerdy' engineer who became a global hero when as a steely-nerved US pilot he made 'one giant leap for mankind' with the first step on the moon." President Obama: "Neil was among the greatest of American heroes—not just of his time, but of all time." Space.com: "A figure so large in American and world history that you can bet many generations from now people will still be talking about him, as well as his moon landing." Houston Chronicle: "Armstrong was the face of what is arguably America's top technological triumph, but for those who knew him in the spaceflight community, he quietly led by setting a good example." Washington Post: He "marked an epochal achievement in exploration with 'one small step'" and thus became one of "the most heroized Americans of the 1960s Cold War space race." The Guardian: Those famous words—"That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind"—still "endure as one of the best known quotes in the English language."