On Neil Armstrong: The Biggest Misquote in World History
Rest in Peace, Neil Armstrong.
Without him, and the thousands of men and women who supported the Apollo program, I might not even be alive here on this planet.
My parents were “progressive” in their ways back in the 1960’s, and were wondering whether or not it would be appropriate to bring another life into this otherwise overpopulated planet.
The night we landed on the Moon, they decided it was time for another child. 10 months later, I was born. This is why my middle name is “Apollo”.
All this said, I want to say something about Neil Armstrong’s famous quote. Neil himself has said on several occasions that his actual words when he stepped on the Moon were: “That’s one small step for A man. One giant leap for mankind.”… which makes a lot more sense!
There is a missing “A” in his quote. Yeah, it makes a difference. “One small step for man” is essentially a non-sequitar, as it does not differentiate from “mankind” in the second half of the quote… Neil misspoke. He meant to say:
“That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind”
I watched the Eagle’s landing and Neil’s first step on CBS with Walter Cronkite in black and white when I was 12. You may not have been born if Buzz Aldrin was the first down the ladder. Your parents may well have rolled their eyes in disgust as Buzz interjected religion into the historical event. As it was, he gave himself communion in private upon landing on the moon.
Neil did misspeak as you report, but it did not diminish the profound Rubicon that the human race crossed in that single moment of time. We had just become aliens on the face of a world that was not of our origin. We had slipped the grasp of Earth, much as a newborn is birthed from it’s mother.
Then we gave up.
Sorry Neil, we let you down. Rest in peace, hero. :love:
In my mind we gave up when we shifted Apollo 18 thru 20 to concentrate on the doomed Skylab projects. Each trip to the moon was more complex and our technology was evolving. The Skylab missions were fraught with emergencies from the very start. Hell, the solar/radiation shield and panel failed to deploy on the very first module sent up. We ended up never launching a fully built and equipped Saturn 5, CSM, Extended Lunar Module and moon rover. They cancelled another build and used stages for 2 existing SatVs for Skylab modules…
I have always believed it was General Westmoreland’s intentional under estimating enemy strengths of the VC / NVA troops to keep our war machine in business and the war going is what was ultimately the gutting of NASA’s budgets since then.
India is sending a manned mission to Mars and China is close behind. It won’t be the same for me. I will be proud of the human effort and achievement of the Indians and Chinese, but I will resent that all those $478Billion plus the billions in supplementals was wasted not on the positives of human technology and endeavor, but the constant feeding of our death and strife dealing war machine.
Howdy Joko.