The moon, desolate and beautiful.
On July 20, 1969, this man slowly stepped out of the spacecraft and took the first step for humans to step on the moon.
And said this amazing quote: "This is only a small step for me, but it is a big step for mankind." This man was Neil Alden Armstrong.
He is the hero of all mankind. However, most of the heroes are lonely, and the scars behind their glory are often unimaginable to ordinary people.
In this film, which is based on Armstrong's biographical novel for more than two hours, it tells the historical facts that he has not known for nearly a decade...., in the movie, people prefer to call Armstrong's last name, Neil, so we call him that here.
In 1961, As a test pilot, Neil flew america's most advanced X-15 fighter jet across the edge of the atmosphere at 4,000 miles per hour, when he was at an altitude of 140,000 feet.
Just as he was about to land, the plane continued to rise out of control, and was even bounced out of the atmosphere, Neil made an emergency operation to let the plane return to Earth, but the descent was too fast, and it almost hit the mountain.
Fortunately, the plane landed safely, and Neil was clearly not in good shape. It turned out that back at home, Neil was a terminally ill father who was also helpless because his young daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
When the death became an inevitable fact, as a father, he could not fully express his grief, and he continued to play the image of being polite at work in front of everyone.
Even if you are alone in a room and ready to cry and weep, you still have to organize your notebook and put it aside. In reality, Neil's two-year-old daughter did die of a brain tumor in 1962, and the specific level of grief should be similar to Ryan Gosling's close-up.
Neil could not accept the reality, and could only plunge into the work to numb himself, but God did not even give him the opportunity to numb himself, and the leader canceled Neil's task. Later Neil learned from the newspaper that NASA was selecting astronauts. Lifting his spirits, Neil went to the interview in a suit, and the interviewer, knowing that Neil had just lost his daughter, asked if he would be affected by her death.
Neil's answer was this.
Contrary to the previous crying, Neil appeared restrained and calm. Maybe not being affected by emotions is the good quality of astronauts. That night, the officer informed Neil that he had passed the interview. From test pilot to astronaut, a new environment, a new life, gave Armstrong and his wife a new look.
Late at night, the couple, who were originally silent because of the death of their daughter, talked happily and relived the happiness of the past.
Neil is a low-key and humble person. After becoming an astronaut, he did not show the feeling of being a "big name" when he was a test pilot. He studied and trained like other astronauts, and after five years of intense training, in March 1966, NASA's Gemini program was about to carry out its final mission, preparing Neil to serve as a command pilot and partner david Scott on a space mission, when Neil was on vacation at home, he suddenly learned bad news, and his two friends and teammates were killed by the fog while they were training in flight. After returning home from the funeral, Neil was in a bad mood, and he rudely refused a friend's talk to watch the moon alone for a night.
Time flies fast gemini program also strides forward, Neil and his teammates are about to be sent into space, but before taking off, Neil found that his snap was stuck in a glue object, the ground staff rushed to take out a knife to cut it out, more terrible is that there is actually a fly in the cabin, national space experiments, it is really unbelievable that such a low-level error can occur. It can be said that in the context of the space race, the Soviet Union is also like this, in the case of insufficient preparation, the astronauts rushed into space, both sides are taking the astronaut's life to make a space gamble.
When Neil they ascended into low-Earth orbit, it took almost no effort to dock with the spacecraft successfully, but just when people were encouraged, the spacecraft suddenly rolled out of control at high speed, they thought that there was a problem with the spacecraft that had just docked, and hurriedly separated from it, but it did not work, they rolled faster and faster, according to this high-speed rotation, Neil would at most support tens of seconds and pass out.
He turned off the control system at an emergency and braked slowly again, which returned to normal. Upon Neil's return to Earth, the chief said that the Gemini program did have some problems, but overall, it ended successfully.
When the Apollo program began in 1967, three of Neil's teammates were testing in a closed mock chamber. When oxygen was injected into the cabin, a sudden short circuit of the wire caused a fire, and in a short moment, three astronauts were unfortunately killed.
Neil still restrained his emotions when he heard the news, and it was only when he put down the phone that he found that the wine glass in his other hand had been crushed by himself.
In 1968, when Neil piloted the lunar landing test aircraft to simulate the training of the moon landing, the aircraft malfunctioned and fell straight to the ground, and Neil escaped with an emergency ejection, and his face was also affected.
On the same day, he returned home with a bloodied face, did not answer a word in the face of his wife's anxious questioning, changed his clothes, took a sip of his drink, and returned to NASA. In fact, the rift between the husband and wife has existed for a long time, and this is only the most obvious one.
At the same time, space accidents are frequent. By this time, nine astronauts had been killed while on mission, and American public opinion was becoming increasingly negative.
In 1969, NASA announced the official launch of the Apollo 11 mission. Neil and two other teammates were about to go to the moon, and the night before the moon, Neil was just quietly packing up his essentials at home, as if he were just going on a business trip. The wife, on the other hand, erupts, believing that Neil's departure is most likely a farewell and that she must say goodbye to her sons formally, rather than packing up her things. In a fit of rage, she even dropped Neil's luggage. Neil is too calm, but his wife is too emotional, which shows that the two of them have the same personalities. In the end, Neil chose to compromise, facing his son, Neil said that he was confident that he would succeed in returning, and the younger son did not understand the world, and only felt sorry, because then Neil missed his swimming competition.
The eldest son looked much more dignified, he knew that Neil might never return, and the two shook hands separately. Perhaps, only then did Neil realize that his son was no longer a child.
At 9:32 a.m. local time on July 16, 1969, the Saturn 5 rocket carrying Apollo 11 was successfully launched. After 4 days of flight, the spacecraft finally came to the vicinity of the moon. When the spacecraft had an unknown malfunction at the time of landing, and it was about to be planted in the crater, Neil decisively switched to manual mode and sailed through the crater before running out of fuel to land safely.
It was later learned that the program alarm during the lunar landing was a "program overflow", which meant that the navigation computer could not complete the scheduled task within the specified time, and the reason for the overflow was that the docking radar of the lunar module did not turn off when it landed, so that the computer still monitored the radar that was not used. The next plot is already well known to everyone, a small step for the individual, a big step for mankind. Neil got off the ship first and his teammate Aldrin followed, bouncing around the moon like a rabbit.
Here to say, in reality, the United States in the Apollo program, has been successful landing on the moon 6 times, each time will be planted with the American flag, but people can only find 5 American flags, the missing one is Apollo 11, that is, the flag of the first landing, the film gives such an explanation, Neil did not plant the flag, but threw his daughter's bracelet into a crater. It can be seen that the sadness of her daughter's death has been deeply burned into Neil's heart and has become eternal.
In order to prevent the return of unknown diseases from the moon, Neil and the team members had to live in the quarantine area for 3 weeks, the wife came to visit, Neil gave her a kiss through the glass, but the wife did not say anything, this insurmountable glass is not just erected in the isolation area, as if erected in their hearts.
Because in reality, the estrangement between the husband and wife has long been deepening, and they divorced in 1994. This space biopic truly records the whole process of Apollo's moon landing, and also lets more people understand the heartache and helplessness behind the space industry.