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It will be Columbus and Magellan and Armstrong, each leapfrogging the other in the innate human impulse to explore, remembered as long as man remembers.

When the names Romney and Obama have moldered into meaninglessness, school children will still learn the name of Armstrong and be inspired by what he did. His will be one of the greatest names of our era, one of the greatest men to ever live.

He was a hero - what he did required tremendous bravery and sense of duty. He may have been one of the bravest men who ever lived. But, it's a stretch to say he was "one of the greatest men who ever lived", or even to compare him to Columbus, Magellan or Cook.

Who remembers the name of the brave sailor in Columbus' crew who first stepped ashore in the New World?

I would love to see the flag raised to a higher height in celebration of a man as honorable as Neal Armstrong. Mourning does not become him...imho.

No scandal, not interesting for the gutter MSM's.

Just an old man who lived a good honorable life, served his country, risked his life and achieved a goal mankind has dreamed about for tens of thousands of years.

R.I.P. Neil Armstrong. You were my hero.

I was 19 when Armstrong walked on the Moon.

Even then I was struck by his personal modesty.

I think Armstrong would have been embarrassed by a state funeral or comparisons to great explorers of the past.

Re: “We have lost the spine and the stones necessary to go new places...”

“We” in this case means government spending, or, more accurately, government debt.

America has trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities and thousands of credible research projects that are worthy of government funding.

NASA has a $15 billion budget, which is probably the largest non-military research budget in the history of the world.

Which government research budgets should be cut so NASA’s budget can be increased?

I happen to work at a DOD facility very near Cape Canaveral. I sent a note to the HR manager suggesting the flag be at half mast for Mr. Armstrong. She replied that “President Obama said that our flag should be at half mast this coming Friday.” Exact words. I am not kidding.

And we’re virtually in the shadow of launch pad 39 A. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it yet.

It shocked the hell out of me, but my daughter sent me a post from Huffington that sounded like it should have been written at a more Conservative site:

I once spent a day with Buzz Aldrin at a book festival around the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, and more than one of the fans who came out to meet him took a moment to complain about the fact that Neil Armstrong no longer did similar events. One woman vented: "I helped pay for your trip to the moon! And he can't even sign a piece of paper for me?"

Buzz Aldrin, unflappably polite, said he was sorry she was having trouble completing her collection and thanked her for coming. But I wished I could get her alone to challenge her logic. Yes, American taxpayers paid for the trip to the moon that Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins enjoyed. But the three astronauts also risked their lives in doing so, and this was after they had already served their country by flying combat missions in Korea and later flying experimental aircraft as test pilots. I wanted to ask her: Exactly how many years of his life do you think Neil Armstrong owes us? Exactly how many autographs should he have to give? A thousand? Ten thousand? How many times should he have to answer the question, "What did it feel like to walk on the moon?" In the day I spent with Buzz Aldrin, I saw him give hundreds of autographs and answer that question hundreds of times, but Buzz Aldrin is an extrovert, a person who clearly enjoys the company of new people and thrives on sharing his stories with others. By all accounts, Neil Armstrong was a textbook introvert, a person who found encounters with new people draining rather than energizing. (Michael Collins seems to be somewhere in the middle.) Neil Armstrong's tendency toward introversion might have been one of the factors that made him the perfect choice to be the commander of Apollo 11, and as part of that duty he made the sacrifice of setting aside his introversion to share his experiences publicly for years after the journey. How much more did he owe us?