And this inherent skill as a cool engineer still shows through today. He just gets on with the job and has set the event in a perspective that records the acheivement without demanding a place of honour for himself. Frank Borman was the only other choice and he passed over having his fame assured with the Earthrise photograph coming from his mission.
You will read how the others that followed did not have the required detachment - some went off chasing religious shadows, others never fitted the event into getting on with the next thing in their life.
The Apollo 13 movie in part makes the point that the world had become bored with spaceflight - this is more the fault of the screw ups on Apollo 12 than anything else. Why you would give two navy flyers the responsibility is difficult for even the author to cover off - they destroyed the colour TV camera the instant they started to use it, so no live pictures and thus the inevitable public turn off and thus the loss of public interest in the Apollo program.
This is a great book - more for the way it shows the inner resoucefulness and cool decision making skills of Borman and Armstrong, and the nearly as good skills of the others.
It's a great read.
A Man on The Moon was the last book I read, and I can speak from firsthand experience when I say that if I would have read it up first, I would have had no need to read the others. That is NOT to say that all of the other books are not good, quality reads (with maybe the exception being Schirra's book), because they certainly are, but Andy Chaikin left absolutely nothing to the imagination and almost no stone unturned when he penned this exciting and informative book.
Even though I was just a toddler when our exploration of the lunar surface began, thanks to Andy Chaikin, I don't feel that I missed a single thing.