40 pages • 1-hour read
Who Was Neil Armstrong?
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Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Test Pilot”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of child death.
In September 1952, Armstrong returned to Purdue. There, he met Janet Shearon, whom he married in 1956 a few months after his graduation. Armstrong decided that he wanted to be an experimental test pilot, and so the couple moved to Edwards Air Force Base in California. Armstrong started flying the new X-15, a rocket-propelled plane that could fly almost 4,000 miles an hour and reach a 207,500-foot altitude. At 50 miles above the earth, Armstrong was actually flying in the lowest part of outer space. In 1957, Armstrong and Jan’s first child, Eric (called Rick by his family) was born. In 1959, their daughter Karen (called Muffie by the family) was born. Unfortunately, when Muffie was two, she took a fall from which she had trouble recovering. When the Armstrongs took her to the doctor, they received the news that Muffie had brain cancer. The little girl lived through the next Christmas but died in January of 1962. Armstrong did not like to talk about Muffie or her death; a week later, he returned to work, keeping his pain to himself. In the wake of his daughter’s death, Armstrong made a life-changing decision: he applied to become a NASA astronaut.
Visual elements of the text: Chapter 4 features illustrations of Armstrong in class at Purdue, Armstrong’s wedding to Jan, a map of California, the X-15 aircraft, Jan waving at Armstrong’s plane, Armstrong and Jan with their two small children, Neil holding his daughter, the Armstrong family at Christmas, and Armstrong standing in the cockpit of a plane.
Chapter 5 Summary: “The Space Race”
By the 1950’s, air travel had become more common. Planes were traveling farther and flying faster and higher than ever before. Rockets had been invented that could travel into space. The American government decided to focus on launching a satellite into orbit around Earth, but the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) reached this goal first. On October 4, 1957, The Soviets put Sputnik I, a small craft the size of a beach ball, into orbit. Because the U.S. and the Soviet Union were rivals in this era, this moment marked the beginning a “Space Race” to see which country could achieve the next goal in outer space: setting foot on the moon.
As a capitalist country, the U.S. experienced a moral panic in this era that the Soviet government would use its power to indoctrinate other countries with communist ideology. Because both countries had large supplies of nuclear weapons, each was afraid of being technologically outpaced by its rival nation. NASA kept trying and failing to get its own craft into orbit. Meanwhile, the Soviets put a larger craft, Sputnik II, into orbit, carrying a dog called Laika. Next, they put Yuri Gagarin, a cosmonaut (Russian astronaut), into orbit. The U.S. struck back by sending astronaut Alan Shephard into space aboard a Mercury spacecraft. Shepherd became the first American to travel into space. President Kennedy took office in 1961 and declared that the United States would be the first to send a man to the moon, assuring the American people this would happen within the decade.
Visual elements of the text: Chapter 5 features illustrations of a jet plane, a newspaper headline about Sputnik I, Sputnik I orbiting the Earth, a map of the U.S.S.R. and the U.S., Laika, Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shephard, John. F. Kennedy, a map of Cape Canaveral and Houston, and the first seven astronauts.
Interlude 5 Summary: “The U.S.S.R.—Ally, Then Enemy”
Although the United States and the U.S.S.R. were allies fighting together at the end of World War II, their alliance ended with the war. The two countries were the most powerful in the world, and the United States worried that the Soviet Union would recruit too many allies and become the single most powerful country. The “Cold War” between these two rivals lasted until 1991, when the Soviet Union broke apart.
Visual elements of the text: This interlude features an illustration of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Astronaut Neil Armstrong”
In 1962, NASA actively recruited astronauts as a part of its effort to reach the moon. Armstrong applied for one of these positions. Although becoming an astronaut would mean giving up controlling his own craft as a test pilot, he was very interested in the project of reaching the moon. On September 17, Armstrong learned that he had been chosen. He and Jan moved to El Lago, Texas, to be close to NASA’s Houston headquarters. Their neighborhood was full of other NASA families, and the Armstrongs enjoyed socializing with them. Jan and Neil had a second son, Mark, in 1963. Armstrong put in very long hours as he trained to become an astronaut. He traveled around the country educating people about the space program, even though he did not enjoy being in the public spotlight. He was sent to Panama to learn how to survive in the jungle for several days, in case his spacecraft crashed down in an unfamiliar environment upon its return to Earth. He and the other astronauts trained in the “Vomit Comet,” a special plane that could recreate the weightless environment of space. One night, Armstrong had not been home and in bed for very long when he realized that his house was on fire. A neighbor immediately came to help try to put out the blaze, and firefighters soon completed the task. The entire house had to be rebuilt.
Visual elements of the text: Chapter 6 features illustrations of Armstrong writing at a desk, the Armstrong family barbecuing in their backyard, a map of Panama, Armstrong outside a tent on a survival training mission in Panama, the fire at the Armstrongs’ house, and Armstrong giving a speech to a large crowd.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
This section of the text centers Armstrong’s transition from pilot to astronaut to further develop its portrait of a courageous and determined man obsessed with flight. Toward the end of the section, Edwards introduces the idea of his humility, which will become an increasingly important motif in the book’s final section.
Edwards includes fewer interludes in this section allowing the more difficult and painful personal experiences depicted from this era of Armstrong’s life to stand alone. Throughout the text, interludes perform multiple functions—in addition to developing the book’s overarching themes, interludes provide historical context, create engagement with intriguing digressions, and feature a more entertaining, livelier tone than the regular text of each chapter. While Chapters 1-3 contain four interludes, Chapters 4-6 contain only one. The more frequent interludes in the first section of the book contextualize Armstrong’s childhood and early military service within the broader history of flight, laying important groundwork for the text’s thematic interest in The Role of Curiosity and Passion in Driving Scientific and Personal Advancement. As Edwards moves on to cover Armstrong’s early adulthood, however, its subject matter grows more serious—Armstrong marries, loses a child, makes the decision to uproot his family and move to Texas to begin the rigorous training of an astronaut, and experiences a terrible house fire. Here, Edwards limits the use of interludes and includes frequent illustrations instead to emphasize the impact of these moments on Armstrong’s life. Marchesi’s drawings take over some of the engagement functions performed in the previous section by interludes.
Marchesi’s illustrations shore up the emotional undercurrents of the personal moments between Armstrong and his family. Although the text deals only briefly with Armstrong’s personal life in Chapter 4, the accompanying illustrations nuance this aspect of his story. The illustrations allow Chapter 4’s text to retain an educational tone and focus on Armstrong’s aeronautic career while still acknowledging the importance of family in Armstrong’s life and communicating the strong emotions surrounding Muffie’s death. The most common subject of the chapter’s illustrations is Armstrong’s personal relationships with his wife and children. Marchesi shows him doting on his children and sitting with them in the context of the family-centered holiday of Christmas. Similarly, while he provides several illustrations of the X-15, pointing to the importance of Armstrong’s flight career, he also includes a flight-related drawing focused on Jan waving at her husband’s plane overhead.
Just as it continues to offer factual coverage of the various stages of Armstrong’s flight career, this section of the text continues to develop the book’s portrait of Armstrong personal character, emphasizing The Importance of Perseverance and Dedication in Achieving One’s Goals. Armstrong completes college, marries a woman several years his junior, moves her across the country and interrupts her college career because “[his] career [comes] first,” and then has two children over the next three years (31). These details portray Armstrong as an archetypical white, middle-class, American man of his era—educated and career-minded, the dominant partner in a heterosexual marriage, and a father of two. Armstrong’s quick return to work after Muffie’s death, his decision to become an astronaut, and his dedication through the arduous training process all highlight his passion and his dedication to his flight career.
Chapter 5, “The Space Race,” and the interlude “The U.S.S.R.—Ally, Then Enemy,” interrupt this narrative of perseverance and forward progress with a digression into the history of the Cold War and the rivalry between America and the Soviet Union to develop weapons and spacecraft. These additions to the text offer important context for understanding Armstrong as an American hero, and demonstrate how crucial space exploration was at this moment in history. They also make it clear how many other people were working toward the same goal and how important other pilots, scientists, and policymakers were in contributing to Armstrong’s accomplishments, underscoring The Significance of Teamwork and Collaboration in Large Scale Endeavors.
Edwards echoes this theme several times when she returns to narrating Armstrong’s life story in Chapter 6. She makes sure to point out that the Armstrongs lived in a neighborhood and socialized with other NASA employees and that, when their house caught fire in the middle of the night, it was astronaut Ed White who immediately showed up to start fighting the fire. She notes that, although Armstrong was called upon to travel around the country making speeches about the space program, “It was his least favorite part of the job” (61), and that he did it not for the individual attention and glory but as part of his team’s larger goal of making sure the public “[understood] the importance of the space program” (62).
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