Neil Armstrong

I don't tend to get too sad or reflective when old people die - it's not as if it should come as a surprise. But some people are so important, or represent something so fundamental, that it would be wrong not to give some serious thought to their passing.

This isn't that serious thought, that'll come later, slowly. But shooting from the hip, I'm slightly overawed by what the name of Neil Armstrong means to me. The Moon landings are, suddenly, a long time ago now and it is becoming hard not to think of them as the zenith for our civilisation: an achievement that has not been and, worryingly, might not be surpassed.

We shouldn't ever be blasé about the fact that, in the late 1960s, we fired men into space to leave their footprints on the dusty surface of another world before bringing them back safely to Earth.

It wasn't just Neil Armstrong's achievement, of course. Hundreds of thousands of men and women worked directly on the project, or contributed towards it. Millions more worked to fund it. And the rest of the world watched on their TVs and held their breath in hope and wonder.

But alone out of all those involved and all those astronauts who came after, Neil Armstrong took those first steps and thus, despite his death today, his name will be remembered. Thousands, tens of thousands of years into the future, possibly for as long as our species survives, he will be remembered.

It's very rare, but some people do achieve such immortality. The real events become contested or forgotten, but we hold onto their names and retell their stories, forever. And having been at the centre of the most extraordinary story, Neil Armstrong has passed from our mortal world and become the stuff of legend.