 When he became the first man to walk on the moon in 1969, Neil Armstrong became Purdue's most famous graduate. In this 2004 interview, he talks about how Purdue launched him to his giant leap to the moon. That's one small step for man. Looking up at the planet Earth was certainly one of the very top highlights. It looks just like you would expect. The Earth to look, we see those planets, mostly blue, little clouds here and there. It's a magnificent sight. Yeah, I'd like to go back. I had to leave some things behind the first time because of our weight limits, and I'd like to go back and pick up the souvenirs. When I was a student on the campus, there was no space program. There was not even a vision of the space program at that time, and certainly I never would have suspected when I was a student that I would be involved in the projects that I ultimately became involved in. It was a surprise to me, but the successes and the opportunities I had were largely a product of what I learned from my professors at Purdue. Going to their dynamics class taught by Professor Shanks, in the first day of class, he gave us an assignment, which happened to be Bernoulli's law, and the assignment was to criticize. And it was right then that I realized that they weren't teaching us facts and information. It was teaching me how to think, and that turned out to be extremely important in many of the situations I encountered. All of my life was involved with either engineering or engineering management or engineering. Ideas, and consequently, the time that I spent at Purdue Learning and Engineering was absolutely critical to everything I've done throughout my entire career. That was Neil Armstrong. Look for more stories at purdue.edu-slash-footprints.