JUNE 2019. DISCOVER 37
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For Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 was one small step
in our migration into the cosmos. BY JAMES R. HANSEN
You’ll find the name Neil Armstrong
in any historical listing of the world’s great-
est explorers. No one would quarrel with
the Apollo 11 commander, test pilot and
first man on the moon being high on that
list. Except Armstrong, that is.
He saw himself as an engineer first.
In an early interview for my biography of
Armstrong, he expressed the raison d’être
of his career in flight: “I flew to the moon
not so much to go there, but as part of
developing the system that would allow
it to happen.”
He once told the National Press Club:
“I am, and ever will be, a white-socks,
pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born
under the second law of thermodynamics,
steeped in the steam tables, in love withfree-body diagrams.... Science is about
what is. Engineering is about what can be.”
He did accept being called a pioneer,
because he knew the word connected
etymologically to engineering. Popular
culture long portrayed American pioneers
as Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett, wearing
buckskins, fighting off Shawnee warriors or
Red Sticks, and opening the way to settle-
ments on the western frontier.
But the English word pioneer has a long
history. The word ultimately derives from
the Medieval Latin word pedo (as in our
English word pedestrian). In ancient times,
pedones were foot soldiers whose job was to
build and repair roads for the main body of
troops. They were engineers, members of a
construction corps who prepared the way
for the main army.
Armstrong’s stock-in-trade was in league
with his fellow pedones, paving the way.Once, over lunch, I asked him to com-
pare the moon landings to another event
in human history. I thought, being an
engineer, he would cite an invention —
the wheel, the compass, the steam engine,
the transistor. But, as happened so often,
his quick answer surprised me: “the
Austronesian expansion.”
He had just read Jared Diamond’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs,
and Steel, which offers a bold and sweeping
explanation of why Eurasian and North
African civilizations survived and con-
quered others, due to geographical and
environmental advantages rather than
intellectual, moral or genetic superiori-
ties. It was clear Armstrong admired the
thesis, but he was focused on one chapterin particular: “Speedboat to Polynesia.”
Archaeologists have found that groups
of people were leaving Asia by boat
tens of thousands of years ago, and by
5000 B.C., these immigrants had estab-
lished a potent and versatile culture on
the island of Taiwan (also once known as
Formosa), combining fishing, gardening
and a little farming.
But their migration was hardly over,
Armstrong explained. Around 2500 B.C.,
having mastered ocean navigation by
plying the water between Taiwan and the
coast of Asia, these enterprising, seagoing
people — the Austronesians — spread out
into the Philippine islands. From there,
they ventured even farther into the vast
Pacific, which covers about one-third of
Earth’s entire surface. The Pacific islands
the Austronesians came to settle — eventu-
ally all the way to Hawaii and Easter Island— are like grains of sand scattered across a
vast blue void. To think that a people could
navigate the Pacific well enough to settle
and establish culture on islands separated
by so much ocean is truly extraordinary,
Armstrong said. Yet somehow early
humans managed to reach them all.
I asked Neil if he saw the Austronesian
expansion as a forerunner for how
humankind will become a true spacefar-
ing civilization.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “We have learned
how to navigate to the moon. That is likethe ancient Chinese mainlanders learning
how to get to Formosa; Formosa is the
moon. After we settle it, we jump off from
there to Mars, just like they went next to
the Philippines. And from there, all across
our vast galaxy. If the Austronesians can
sail in their boats and scatter into settle-
ments all across Oceania, we can take our
spacecraft and scatter and settle all across
the Milky Way.
“It may take even longer than it took the
Austronesians, but if they did it, so can we,”
he said. “Because they are us.”^ DJames R. Hansen is professor emeritus
of history at Auburn University and the author
of several books, including First Man: The Life
of Neil A. Armstrong, which has been translated
into more than 20 languages.WHEN WE SET SAIL
“We have learned how to navigate to the moon.
That is like the ancient Chinese mainlanders learning
how to get to Formosa.” — Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong was the first person to step on
the moon, but he saw himself as an engineer first,
part of a long chain of human exploration.