User Reviews

I was a teenager in the 1960s when the Space Program got its jumpstart to get to the moon. I was a married young adult in 1969, just out of Purdue Graduate school, when Neil A. Armstrong made that landing and then the first steps on the moon. I remember it all, like the rest of the world I was in awe.

Only later did I realize my connection to Armstrong, both of us are from small communities and both of us decided to go to Purdue. Now I think that he and I walked the same walkways on campus and had classes in some of the same classrooms, just a few years apart. But he got to the moon and I didn't!

This 53-minute NOVA presentation is really great. Just long enough to cover his life but not so long as to get boring.

The documentary was made after Armstrong's sudden death following heart surgery in 2012. He had just turned 82. It features many film clips over the years plus some audio tape recordings of Neil himself. Many of the contributors are friends and family, including Neil's sons.

Two things stand out to me. An accomplished test pilot, one of the best ever, he understood the dangers and never got scared, even after a very close call. He had a job to do and he was there to do it.

The second was what his closest friends say, what everybody saw was the real Neil Armstrong, he was exactly who he seemed to be.