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SALT LAKE CITY — The late Neil Armstrong long maintained that his famous words after stepping on the moon for the first time — "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind" — were almost improvised, something he thought up just after landing.
But family members recently interviewed in a BBC documentary have said that he came up with well-known turn of phrase months in advance of the moon landing.
According to Armstrong's brother Dean, Armstrong slipped him a piece of paper with the iconic lines written on it while they played a game of Risk in 1969, long before the Apollo 11 launch.
"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,'" Dean said in the documentary.
Armstrong maintained until his death that the line was more spur of the moment. Apollo historian Andrew Chaikin wrote "A Man on the Moon" that that many crew members passed along their own ideas of what he should say in the days before the launch, Chaikin said that Armstrong did not know what he would say going in.
Dean Armstrong's words seem to contradict both Armstrong and Chaikin.
Related:
Neil Armstrong came in peace for all mankind
Astronaut Neil Armstrong has died. The first person on the moon has taken another small step for a man.On the bright side, though, Dean seems to back up Armstrong's claims that he didn't flub the lines and drop the "a" from his speech. Dean said that Armstrong intended to say "a man" and not leave out the "a."
Speculation about what Armstrong really said has been active since 1969. One Australian computer programmer, Peter Ford, claimed that analysis of the recording shows that Armstrong did in fact say "a man," though the limitations of the recording and broadcasting technology prevented the article from coming through clearly. Others still maintain he messed up the line, like the bloggers at Language Log.
NASA's official transcripts continue to place the article in editorial parentheses.
Regardless of whether Armstrong penned the lines in advance or misquoted himself while saying them, surely he can be forgiven for both, considering he was walking on the most foreign soil imaginable 238,900 miles from home.
