I came home from a weekend away to find that Neil Armstrong, the “one small step for man” guy, died on Saturday.

XKCD #893: 65 Years

Childhood hero bites the dust.

Like Julius Caesar, people are going to be talking and learning about this guy in a thousand years, and that’s pretty damn special. Want to guess what people are going to be saying about you in 2000 years? Well, I hate to burst your bubble: it’s not going to be anything.

He was born in 1930, when powered flight was 27 years old. 39 years after that, he became a household name in every household in the planet. The man singlehandedly (with the industrial and intellectual power of the free world behind him) changed the way that our entire species looked at the universe and our combined place in it.

He was the first person to walk on another world 12 others have done that, four have passed on. Anyone wanna be the first person on Mars?