NEIL ARMSTRONG – MUSLIN, MOON ROCK AND SIR EDMUND HILLARY

Image By NASA - Great Images in NASA Description, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6448070

NEIL ARMSTRONG - MUSLIN, MOON ROCK & SIR EDMUND HILLARY

( Photographs of moon rock kindly presented for this piece by the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum, Wapakoneta, Ohio, USA. NASA also asked to receive a copy of this article for Adam's Arc, a column I wrote at the request of the Editor of Chaff, the newspaper of  Massey University Students Association -MUSA- following my invitation to the opening of the new MUSA building in 2007).

In 2008, Adam's Arc will be searching for a total experience of the USA, riding along a virtual Route 66, that tells us as much as possible about our friendly neighbourhood giant in this global village.

The original Route 66 - " the Main Street of America" - began in Chicago and ended in Los Angeles , via Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. Much of it has fractured into interstate highways, yet the stories and history live on, as illustrated in U2's own sojourn through America's heartland in Rattle and Hum : " Route 66, a highway speaks of deserts, dry of cool green valleys, gold and silver reins, all the shining cities."

Cyber 66, the route of Adam's American Arc, will ricochet and bounce with angular logic.

We begin with a pleasant phone call to Rebecca McWhinney, Historic Site Manager of the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio, named in honour of the first man to walk on the moon. In "Neil's home town" of 15,000,over one million artefacts are preserved to provide a rich and accessible education on the whole Space Age era.

The museum's time line and arrays encapsulate the 17th Century, the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the very first plane flown by Neil Armstrong, a replica of the Gemini 8 spacecraft from Armstrong's first voyage into space, the spacesuit from Apollo 11, the H1 Saturn 1B rocket. Many items have been personally donated by Neil Armstrong, amidst the aptly named Infinity Room, space simulators and theatre presentations.

Amazingly, Wapakoneta, is in the Aviation Heritage Corridor, a mere fifty miles from Dayton, Ohio where the Wright brothers invented and flew the world's first airplane in 1903. In a poignant salute to both his community and aviation history, Neil Armstrong placed a piece of muslin fabric from the left wing of the Wright brothers' plane on the moon's surface in 1969.

As if the moon were serving up a little of its own history in exchange, Neil Armstrong returned with a 3.7 billion year old sample of moon rock made up of basalt, plagioclase ( a major mineral in both the Earth's crust and the highlands of the moon) and olivine, ( another mineral common to both Earth and the moon). This moon rock can be viewed at Ohio's Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum.

Neil Armstrong came to mind recently, as New Zealand reflected on the recent passing of the iconic Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain.

Not many people know that Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong accompanied Pat Morrow, the leader of Canada's first expedition to Everest, on a plane trip to the North Pole on April 6th, 1985. Morrow wanted the first man on the moon and the first man to climb Everest to visit the North Pole seventy-six years to the day after Robert Peary first reached the North Pole. All realized that despite the great risks of reaching the North Pole by ski-plane, their flight was easy compared to Peary's twenty-three year sacrifice and loss of nine toes. Hillary felt that he was taking a guided tour and wanted a little more adventure, yet he had just been appointed New Zealand High Commissioner to India by Prime Minister David Lange, and only had a few days spare before taking up the post.

So Sir Edmund Hillary found himself, en route to a new career milestone in his epic life, becoming the first and only man to experience standing on top of Everest and at both the North and South Poles.

Yet a reading at the North Pole by Neil Armstrong put my own concept of

Sir Edmund Hillary into perspective.

Paying homage to Salomon Andree, the Swedish explorer who perished in 1897 in an attempt to reach the North Pole by hydrogen balloon, Armstrong quoted directly from Andree's own writings : "We think we can well face death, having known what we have done is not the whole, perhaps the expression of an extremely strong sense of individuality, which cannot bear the thought of living and dying like a man within the ranks, forgotten by the coming generations? Is this ambition ? "

This gets to the nub of what I believe is a misconception about Sir Edmund Hillary that has been briefly, yet wisely, touched on recently by writer Paul Little in the New Zealand Listener. The idea that Sir Ed was one of us , a man that could perform these amazing feats yet remain " a Kiwi bloke", a typical New Zealander. Sir Edmund's wonderful work building schools and hospitals in the Himalayas has been attributed to an era in New Zealand when people's concern for one another was ingrained into Government social policy. There is undoubtedly substance in this view.

Yet Sir Edmund Hillary possessed "an extremely strong sense of individuality" which Neil Armstrong alluded to in his homage to the spirit of exploration. It is this individuality which needs to be celebrated more throughout New Zealand if we are to prosper, and if we are to truly commemorate the greatness of Hillary's life and work . We have much to learn from the USA with its great promotion of individual rights and its cheer leading and celebration of achievement.

By contrast, far too many New Zealanders, with too much self-doubt and negativity, would need a dictionary to look up the word "encouragement".

Yet ethics of neighbourliness, community spirit and service, that Sir Edmund epitomized so very well, can remind the world of its obligations towards the provision of sound health,education, and employment policies. These ethics are also part of New Zealand's social philosophy.

The achievements of Neil Armstrong and Sir Edmund Hillary represent the best of the USA and the best of New Zealand. Both men stood at what, from an astronaut's point of view, is the top of the world.

Both the USA and New Zealand, can be the top of the world, encouraging each other and celebrating much needed universal qualities of individuality and community spirit. See you again on Cyber 66.

......... ADAM GREENWELL- February, 2008