Astronaut Neil Armstrong remembered in nation's capital today

America said goodbye today to Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on another world beyond Earth. "The powerful of Washington, the pioneers of space, and the everyday public crowded into the Washington National Cathedral for a public interfaith memorial for the very private astronaut," reports the AP. Armstrong died last month in Ohio at age 82. He walked on the moon in July 1969. "He's now slipped the bounds of Earth once again, but what a legacy he left," former Treasury Secretary John Snow said at the services this morning at the National Cathedral. Here, his fellow Apollo 11 crew member Michael Collins remembers him.

Thumbnail: L-R, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Annie Glenn, astronaut and former Ohio Sen. John Glenn, and singer Diana Krall, during the opening processional. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)

• [royaltrux]

  Godspeed, Neil. The world feels different without you. 

  • [Brainspore]

    This isn’t the first time that the world said goodbye to Neil Armstrong, but it’s the first time we won’t have a chance to welcome him back to it.

  • [Noctilucent Studios]

     It does, doesn’t it? Weirdly so. How often does someone get to be the first of a species to do something new?

    • [An Infinitude of Tortoises]

      Armstrong was our primordial lungfish, crawling toward the stars.

• [Pjay]

  Bonds. Not bounds, bonds. Is education dead? The poem being paraphrased says “Oh, I have slipped the surly BONDS of earth…” [emphasis mine] Bounds makes no sense what-so-ever.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    bound
    noun
    1. Usually, bounds. limit or boundary: the bounds of space and time; within the bounds of his estate; within the bounds of reason.
    2. something that limits, confines, or restrains.
    3. bounds,
    a. territories on or near a boundary.
    b. land within boundary lines.