Based on the normal crew rotation scheme

Based on the normal crew rotation scheme, Armstrong would command Apollo 11. To attempt to give the astronauts experience with how the LM would fly on its final landing descent, NASA commissioned Bell Aircraft to build two Lunar Landing Research Vehicles, later augmented with three Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV). ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1050EI Battery} Nicknamed the "Flying Bedsteads", they simulated the Moon's one-sixth of Earth's gravity by using a turbofan engine to support the remaining five-sixths of the craft's weight. On May 6, 1968, about 100 feet (30 m) above the ground, Armstrong's controls started to degrade and the LLTV began banking. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1050EN Battery} He ejected safely (later analysis suggested that if he had ejected 0.5 seconds later, his parachute would not have opened in time). His only injury was from biting his tongue. Even though he was nearly killed, Armstrong maintained that without the LLRV and LLTV, the lunar landings would not have been successful, as they gave commanders valuable experience in the behavior of lunar landing craft. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1050EO Battery} After Armstrong served as backup commander for Apollo 8, Slayton offered him the post of commander of Apollo 11 on December 23, 1968, as Apollo 8 orbited the Moon.In a meeting that was not made public until the publication of Armstrong's biography in 2005, Slayton told him that although the planned crew was Armstrong as commander, ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1050EP Battery} lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin and command module pilot Michael Collins, he was offering the chance to replace Aldrin with Jim Lovell. After thinking it over for a day, Armstrong told Slayton he would stick with Aldrin, as he had no difficulty working with him and thought Lovell deserved his own command. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1050ET Battery} Replacing Aldrin with Lovell would have made Lovell the Lunar Module Pilot, unofficially the lowest ranked member, and Armstrong could not justify placing Lovell, the commander of Gemini 12, in the number 3 position of the crew. A March 1969 meeting between Slayton, George Low, ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1050US Battery} Bob Gilruth, and Chris Kraft determined that Armstrong would be the first person on the Moon, in some part because NASA management saw Armstrong as a person who did not have a large ego.^[60] A press conference held on April 14, 1969 gave the design of the LM cabin as the reason for Armstrong's being first; ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1053CL Battery} the hatch opened inwards and to the right, making it difficult for the lunar module pilot, on the right-hand side, to egress first. Slayton added, "Secondly, just on a pure protocol basis, I figured the commander ought to be the first guy out. . . . I changed it as soon as I found they had the time line that showed that. Bob Gilruth approved my decision." ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1055EE Battery} At the time of their meeting, the four men did not know about the hatch issue. The first knowledge of the meeting outside the small group came when Kraft wrote his 2001 autobiography.^[62] On July 16, 1969, Armstrong received a crescent moon carved out of Styrofoam from the pad leader, Guenter Wendt, who described it as a key to the Moon. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1056EL Battery} In return, Armstrong gave Wendt a ticket for a "space taxi" "good between two planets". During the Apollo 11 launch, Armstrong's heart reached a top rate of 110 beats per minute.^[64] He found the first stage to be the loudest—much noisier than the Gemini 8 Titan II launch—and the Apollo CSM was relatively roomy compared to the Gemini capsule. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1058EL Battery} This ability to move around was suspected to be the reason why none of the Apollo 11 crew suffered from space sickness, while members of previous crews did. Armstrong was especially happy, as he had been prone to motion sickness as a child and could experience nausea after doing long periods of aerobatics. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1060EL Battery} The objective of Apollo 11 was to land safely rather than to touch down with precision on a particular spot. Three minutes into the lunar descent burn, Armstrong noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which meant the Eagle would probably touch down beyond the planned landing zone by several miles. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1060EO Battery} As the Eagle's landing radaracquired the surface, several computer error alarms appeared. The first was a code 1202 alarm, and even with their extensive training, neither Armstrong nor Aldrin was aware of what this code meant. They promptly received word from CAPCOM in Houston that the alarms were not a concern; ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1060ES Battery} the 1202 and 1201 alarms were caused by an executive overflow in the lunar module computer. As described by Buzz Aldrin in the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, the overflow condition was caused by his own counter-checklist choice of leaving the docking radar on during the landing process, ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1060EV Battery} so the computer had to process unnecessary radar data and did not have enough time to execute all tasks, dropping lower-priority ones. Aldrin stated that he did so with the objective of facilitating re-docking with the CM should an abort become necessary, not realizing that it would cause the overflow condition. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1062EL Battery} 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.For this reason, there was concern from mission control that the LM was running low on fuel. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1066EL Battery} 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.^[69] 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. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1068EL Battery} Analysis after the mission showed that at touchdown there were 45 to 50 seconds of propellant burn time left.The landing on the surface of the moon occurred at 20:17:39 UTC on July 20, 1969.^[71] When a sensor attached to the legs of the still hovering Lunar Module made lunar contact, a panel light inside the LM lit up and Aldrin called out, "Contact light." ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1070EO Battery} As the LM settled on the surface Aldrin then said, "Okay. Engine stop," and Armstrong said, "Shutdown." The first words Armstrong intentionally spoke to Mission Control and the world from the lunar surface were, "Houston,Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Aldrin and Armstrong celebrated with a brisk handshake and ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1080EL Battery} pat on the back before quickly returning to the checklist of tasks needed to ready the lunar module for liftoff from the Moon should an emergency unfold during the first moments on the lunar surface. During the critical landing, the only message from Houston was "30 seconds", meaning the amount of fuel left. When Armstrong had confirmed touch-down, ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1080EQ Battery} Houston expressed its worries during the manual landing as "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again". Although the official NASA flight plan called for a crew rest period before extra-vehicular activity, Armstrong requested that the EVA be moved to earlier in the evening, Houston time. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1080ES Battery} Once Armstrong and Aldrin were ready to go outside, Eagle was depressurized, the hatch was opened and Armstrong made his way down the ladder first. At the bottom of the ladder, Armstrong said "I'm going to step off the LEM now" (referring to the Apollo Lunar Module). He then turned and set his left boot on the surface at 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969, ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1090EO Battery} then spoke the famous words "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong had decided on this statement following a train of thought that he had had after launch and during the hours after landing.The broadcast did not have the "a" before "man", rendering the phrase a contradiction (as man in such use is synonymous with mankind). ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1090ES Battery} NASA and Armstrong insisted for years that static had obscured the "a", with Armstrong stating he would never make such a mistake, but after repeated listenings to recordings, Armstrong admitted he must have dropped the "a".Armstrong later said he "would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said—although it might actually have been".^{HP Pavilion DV6-1099EF Battery} It has since been claimed that acoustic analysis of the recording reveals the presence of the missing "a";^[76][79] Peter Shann Ford, an Australia-based computer programmer, conducted a digital audio analysis and claims that Armstrong did, in fact, say "a man", but the "a" was inaudible due to the limitations of communications technology of the time. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1100EO Battery} Ford and James R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented these findings to Armstrong and NASA representatives, who conducted their own analysis.^[82] The article by Ford, however, is published on Ford's own web site rather than in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and linguists David Beaver and Mark Liberman ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1100ES Battery} wrote of their skepticism of Ford's claims on the blog Language Log.^[83] Although Armstrong found Ford's analysis "persuasive",^[84] he expressed his preference that written quotations include the "a" in parentheses. When Armstrong made his proclamation, Voice of America was rebroadcast live via the BBC and many other stations worldwide. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1100SO Battery} The estimated global audience at that moment was 450 million listeners,^[86] out of a then estimated world population of 3.631 billion people.About 20 minutes after the first step, Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface and became the second human to set foot on the Moon, and the duo began their tasks of investigating how easily a person could operate on the lunar surface. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1100SS Battery} Early on, they unveiled a plaque commemorating their flight, and also planted the flag of the United States. The flag used on this mission had a metal rod to hold it horizontal from its pole. Since the rod did not fully extend, and the flag was tightly folded and packed during the journey, the flag ended up with a slightly wavy appearance, as if there were a breeze. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1100SV Battery} Shortly after their flag planting, President Richard Nixon spoke to them by a telephone call from his office. The President spoke for about a minute, after which Armstrong responded for about thirty seconds. In the entire Apollo 11 photographic record, there are only five images of Armstrong partly shown or reflected. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1101AU Battery} The mission was planned to the minute, with the majority of photographic tasks to be performed by Armstrong with a single Hasselblad camera.After helping to set up the Early Apollo Scientific Experiment Package, Armstrong went for a walk to what is now known as East Crater, 65 yards (59 m) east of the LM, the greatest distance traveled from the LM on the mission. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1101AX Battery} Armstrong's final task was to leave a small package of memorial items to deceased Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, and Apollo 1 astronautsGus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee. The time spent on EVA during Apollo 11 was about two and a half hours, the shortest of any of the six Apollo lunar landing missions; ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1101SO Battery} each of the subsequent five landings were allotted gradually longer periods for EVA activities—the crew of Apollo 17, by comparison, spent over 22 hours exploring the lunar surface. After they re-entered the LM, the hatch was closed and sealed. While preparing for the liftoff from the lunar surface, Armstrong and Aldrin discovered that, ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1101TU Battery} in their bulky spacesuits, they had broken the ignition switch for the ascent engine; using part of a pen, they pushed the circuit breaker in to activate the launch sequence.^[92] The lunar module then continued to its rendezvous and docked with Columbia, the command and service module. The three astronauts returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific ocean, to be picked up by the USS Hornet. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1101TX Battery} After being released from an 18-day quarantine to ensure that they had not picked up any infections or diseases from the Moon, the crew were feted across the United States and around the world as part of a 45-day "Giant Leap" tour. Armstrong then took part in Bob Hope's 1969 USO show, primarily to Vietnam. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1102AU Battery} In May 1970, Armstrong traveled to the Soviet Union to present a talk at the 13th annual conference of the International Committee on Space Research; after arriving in Leningrad from Poland, he traveled to Moscow where he met Premier Alexei Kosygin. He was the first westerner to see the supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 and was given a tour of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1102AX Battery} which Armstrong described as "a bit Victorian in nature".^[95] At the end of the day, he was surprised to view delayed video of the launch of Soyuz 9—it had not occurred to Armstrong that the mission was taking place, even though Valentina Tereshkova had been his host and her husband, Andriyan Nikolayev, was on board. ^{HP Pavilion DV6-1102TU Battery} Armstrong announced shortly after the Apollo 11 flight that he did not plan to fly in space again.^[97] He was appointed Deputy Associate Administrator for aeronautics for the Office of Advanced Research and Technology, Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), but served in this position for only a year, and resigned from it and NASA as a whole in 1971. HP Pavilion DV6-1102TX Battery He accepted a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati,^[99] having decided on Cincinnati over other universities, including his alma mater, Purdue, because it had a small aerospace department; he hoped that the faculty members would not be annoyed that he came straight into a professorship with only the USC master's degree. HP Pavilion DV6-1103AU Battery He began the work while stationed at Edwards years before, and finally completed it after Apollo 11 by presenting a report on various aspects of Apollo, instead of a thesis on the simulation of hypersonic flight. The official job title he received at Cincinnati was University Professor of Aerospace Engineering. After teaching for eight years, he resigned in 1979 without explaining his reason for leaving. HP Pavilion DV6-1103AX Battery Armstrong served on two spaceflight accident investigations. The first was in 1970, after Apollo 13, where as part of Edgar Cortwright's panel, he produced a detailed chronology of the flight. Armstrong personally opposed the report's recommendation to re-design the service module's oxygen tanks, the source of the explosion. HP Pavilion DV6-1103EE Battery In 1986, President Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Rogers Commission which investigated the Space-shuttle Challenger disaster of that year. As vice-chairman, Armstrong was in charge of the operational side of the commission. After Armstrong retired from NASA in 1971, he acted as a spokesman for several businesses. HP Pavilion DV6-1103EI Battery The first company to successfully approach him was Chrysler, for whom he appeared in advertising starting in January 1979. Armstrong thought they had a strong engineering division, plus they were in financial difficulty. He later acted as a spokesman for other companies, including General Time Corporation and the Bankers Association of America. HP Pavilion DV6-1103EO Battery He acted as a spokesman for U.S. businesses only. Along with spokesman duties, he also served on the board of directors of several companies, including Marathon Oil, Learjet, Cinergy (Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company), Taft Broadcasting, United Airlines, Eaton Corporation, AIL Systems and Thiokol. HP Pavilion DV6-1103TU Battery He joined Thiokol's board after he served on the Rogers Commission; the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed due to a problem with the Thiokol-manufactured solid rocket boosters. He retired as chairman of the board of EDO Corporation in 2002. Armstrong was approached by political groups from both ends of the spectrum after his aeronautical career. HP Pavilion DV6-1103TX Battery Unlike former astronauts and U.S. Senators John Glenn (D-OH; 1974-1999 and Harrison Schmitt (R-NM; 1977-1983), Armstrong declined all offers. Personally, he was in favor of states' rights and against the United States acting as the "world's policeman".^[109] In the late 1950s, Armstrong applied at a local Methodist church to lead a Boy Scout troop. When asked for his religious affiliation, he labeled himself as a Deist. HP Pavilion DV6-1104AU Battery His mother later said that Armstrong's religious views caused her grief and distress in later life as she was more religious. His official biography also describes him as a deist.In 1972, Armstrong was welcomed into the town of Langholm, Scotland, the traditional seat of Clan Armstrong; he was made the first freeman of the burgh, and happily declared the town his home. HP Pavilion DV6-1104AX Battery The Justice of the Peace read from an unrepealed 400-year-old law that required him to hang any Armstrong found in the town. In the fall of 1979, Armstrong was working at his farm near Lebanon, Ohio. As he jumped off of the back of his grain truck, his wedding ring caught in the wheel, tearing off the tip of his ring finger. HP Pavilion DV6-1104TU Battery He collected the severed digit and packed it in ice, and surgeons reattached it at the Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.^[114] In February 1991, a year after his father had died, and nine months after the death of his mother, he suffered a mild heart attack while skiing with friends at Aspen, Colorado. Armstrong married his first wife Janet Shearon on January 28, 1956. HP Pavilion DV6-1104TX Battery The couple soon added to their family. Their son Eric was born in 1957, followed by daughter, Karen, in 1959. Karen died of complications related to an inoperable brain tumor in January 1962. The following year, the Armstrongs welcomed their third child, son Mark. HP Pavilion DV6-1105AU Battery Armstrong's first wife, Janet, divorced him in 1994, after 38 years of marriage.^[117] He had met his second wife, Carol Held Knight (b. 1945),) in 1992 at a golf tournament, where they were seated together at the breakfast table. She said little to Armstrong, but two weeks later she received a call from him asking what she was doing—she replied she was cutting down a cherry tree; HP Pavilion DV6-1105AX Battery 35 minutes later Armstrong was at her house to help out. They were married on June 12, 1994, in Ohio, and then had a second ceremony, at San Ysidro Ranch, in California. He lived in Indian Hill, Ohio.^[119] Armstrong is generally referred to as a "reluctant" American Hero. John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, recalled Armstrong’s legendary humility. HP Pavilion DV6-1105EE Battery “He didn’t feel that he should be out huckstering himself,” the former Ohio senator told CNN.^[120] “He was a humble person, and that’s the way he remained after his lunar flight, as well as before.” After 1994, Armstrong refused all requests for autographs because he found that his signed items were selling for large amounts of money and that many forgeries were in circulation; HP Pavilion DV6-1105EI Battery any requests that were sent to him received a form letterin reply, saying that he had stopped signing. Although his no-autograph policy was well known, author Andrew Smithobserved people at the 2002 Reno Air Races still trying to get signatures, with one person even claiming, "If you shove something close enough in front of his face, he'll sign." HP Pavilion DV6-1105EO Battery He also stopped sending out congratulatory letters to new Eagle Scouts, because he believed these letters should come from people who know the Scouts personally.^[122] Use of Armstrong's name, image, and famous quote caused him problems over the years. MTV wanted to use his quote for its now-famous identity depicting the Apollo 11 landing when it launched in 1981, HP Pavilion DV6-1105ES Battery but he declined.^[123] Armstrong suedHallmark Cards in 1994 after they used his name and a recording of "one small step" quote in a Christmas ornament without permission. The lawsuit was settled out of court^[124] for an undisclosed amount of money which Armstrong donated to Purdue.^[125] In May 2005, Armstrong became involved in an unusual legal battle with his barber of 20 years, Marx Sizemore. HP Pavilion DV6-1105SL Battery After cutting Armstrong's hair, Sizemore sold some of it to a collector for $3,000 without Armstrong's knowledge or permission.^[126] Armstrong threatened legal action unless the barber returned the hair or donated the proceeds to a charity of Armstrong's choosing. Sizemore, unable to get the hair back, decided to donate the proceeds to the charity of Armstrong's choice. HP Pavilion DV6-1105TU Battery