In a world that hungers for heroes, he has been the genuine article many times over: a stoic jet fighter pilot who narrowly escaped death on a combat mission in Korea; a daring test pilot who soared in the experimental X-15; the pilot of Gemini 8 who found himself spinning out of control; and the Apollo 11 commander who deftly guided the lunar module Eagle to a safe landing on the moon with only 20 seconds of fuel to spare.

The details in this 69-piece post come from both NASA and James R Hansen's remarkable 2005 authorised biography "First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong", which can be ordered from Amazon here.

As well as the other previous Google Earth posts mentioned on the tour, fabri2 has several excellent 3D models from the Apollo 11 mission here and ramon25 marked the Tranquility Base landing location here. Also, there's a great panoramic shot of Eagle on the moon here and this British website has an amazing collection of photos from the moon mission.

UPDATE Feb 12, 2007: Thanks to Hill for a note on aircraft and chronological accuracy and to Bebop for pointing out another worthy spot in Armstrong's life, the tour is slightly larger and a lot better. Their tips also gave me a second chance to count correctly from 1 to 69.

19,000+ downloads prior to Aug09 edit

Ciao Dorsey

Excellent post!
Another one from you to keep on my HDD. Thanks for sharing.

Bye
b

Another finely made piece of work Paul. I always look forward to your posts

Fascinating, thank you for posting. It must have been a lot of work, but this is one thing that GE does so well, enabling us to see the locations of the events. The moon overlay for the moon placemarks is very effective. I love the quote about the moon walk "Pilots take no special joy in walking, pilots like flying".

"That's one small step for Google Earth, one giant leap for Dorseyland"

Delta102 has the situation and my opinion exact

"I always look forward to your posts"

Everytime you present a post like this, I cannot see how you could do better - yet somehow, each time you do, raising the bar of perfection.

Congratulations on this post!!

Thanks,
Phil

Ha! That's great, Phil, thank you so much. A bit worrying of course, since I don't see where the next improvement could be. Open for suggestions!

I've tried and failed to download the animations and shadow stuff that are currently hot at GE, thinking there might be some technology there I could use, but either my free basic version or my computer aren't up to the task or I just don't get it, tech-wise.

Meanwhile I'm clearing out some small, long-standing GE projects before getting on with the next big one -- Salvador Dali. Anyone reading this who has something about Dali to contribute beyond what was posted in brief form a couple of years ago, I'd love to hear from you.

Huge thanks also to Delta, Bebop and Noisette for their compliments and encouragement, as well as Hill for his help. I really, really appreciate it.

Don't worry, Dorsey. Even if your next collection is not as fascinating as your previous ones, we are all too polite to say so.

Ignore the name. It's simply a name that my friend and I came up with while being ridiculous, but I fully support Neil!

Anyway, I am ChrisSimpson who originally posted the placemark to Neil's home.

I just wanted to say two things:

A) Excellent job on this collection

B) Thank you so very much for the credit! I feel very appreciated for being recognized!

Keep up the good work.

I remember setting up a camera in front of our television and taking pictures of the landing and first moonwalk. I still have the photographs and I treasure them.
Neil Armstrong has always avoided the limelight. He does not think of himself as a hero, but only as a soldier doing the job he was assigned to do.
I disagree with him. He will always be a hero to me.

On the off chance he Googles his own name, I hope he reads this thread.
I wanted to quote Kevin Costner from "Field of Dreams".
"Leave the man alone. He's done enough."