FRA, I would not have mentioned this so to respect the wishes of the OP of the thread you are referring to, but now that you make such a big deal out of the lack of response, I think I will indulge... I have an excuse for not participating in that other thread. You see, I believe that Neil Armstrong was a fraud for the reason that I am convinced the Apollo program was basically an elaborated PSYOP...
But if I did accept the Apollo missions as being genuine, I would say Armstrong is simply a person who successfully performed the tasks and duties of his job. That is no better than anyone else who has reached the top of his/her profession through competent work, determination and dedication. There is no reason to believe that Armstrong provided anything that was impossible to achieve for other NASA astronauts.
As with most collective trance that have been manufactured through mass media programming, specific moments, specific images and specific faces are necessary to carry a concept. An icon was needed to represent the “unprecedented human achievement” of a man setting foot on another celestial body and Armstrong was specifically trained and used for that purpose. Neil is an icon, which is first and foremost, an image; a representation.