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We all know the line, but what about the story behind it? Neil Armstrong was always keen on telling folks that he’d thought up the historical words after landing on the moon, but before the walk. That is to say, relatively off-the-cuff. A new documentary tells a slightly different story.
According to Neil Armstrong: First Man on the Moon, which premiered on BCC Two on Sunday, Neil had actually scripted the words months in advance. Dean Armstrong, Neil’s brother, reveals that Neil had passed him a note with the line written on it way beforehand. Dean puts it this way in the documentary:
Before he went to the Cape, he invited me down to spend a little time with him. He said “why don’t you and I, once the boys go to bed, why don’t we play a game of Risk.”
I said I’d enjoy that. We started playing Risk and then he slipped me a piece of paper and said “read that.” I did.
On that piece of paper there was “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” He says “what do you think about that?” I said “fabulous.” He said “I thought you might like that, but I wanted you to read it.”
In the interview, Dean initially missed the “a” too, repeating the line as we’ve heard it so many times. Neil had always insisted that he had said the “a” and it had just been lost in static, and Dean corrected himself just moments after the quote above, saying the “a” had been present in the note.
And so that seems to be the story. Unfortunately Neil isn’t around to confirm or deny, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that he pondered the line before launch, though he might have preferred we all thought it was spur of the moment poetry. Missing article or not, prepared or spontaneous, it’s a fascinating little story about a fascinating man’s fascinating statement. [The Telegraph]
The Only Photo of Neil Armstrong On the Moon
Neil Armstrong's Postcard From the Moon
RIP Neil Armstrong, First Man on the Moon
I never believed it was a spur of the moment thing. I always thought it would have been something he was thinking about saying before and during the mission. It would have been no good if he got there, was so overwhelmed from the awesomeness of being on the moon and just mumbled something that was no way near as profound.
I never believed it was spur of the moment stuff, for one thing every press conference given by nasa astronauts was tightly controlled to provide the best possible impression, would the US Government really allow someone who was being watched by the entire world, who’s words were going to be part of history to say whatever popped into his head? Sure they couldn’t have stopped him, but I suspect that if his first words were “Fuck me I’m on the fucking moon” that there would have been a sudden breakdown in communication.
Or it could be like “Shit I need to piss”.
The first step in the moon was such an important event including the effect of winning the space race at the height of the cold war that nothing in NASA’s space program would be left to chance. That video feed live from the moon was never properly picked up outside the US, the audio was – unfortunately missing an A and changing the context slightly and for the better, in fact the most important sentence ever uttered by a human being.
Note that I am not a moon landing conspiritor but holywood and graphics did play a part in reconstruction and presentation of damaged and missing footage. Not everything we saw was true even if it happened, just because of the competition with the Soviets(So much pristine footage, so little radiation fogging and high energy particles on the ccd)
Isn’t there another version concerning something his childhood neighbour’s wife yelled at her husband one day when Neil Armstrong was a kid?
Something along the lines of “You’ll get one of those when the kid next door walks on the moon”
So when he does, he transmits….”This one’s for you Mr. Smith”
Yes. And that one was invented by someone about 25 years after the event.
As for this Risk story, Neil never said there was any pre-thought or -planning behind his words. So I treat with caution any story which claims anything in relation to it.