One step beyond: Remembering Neil Armstrong

No matter. NASA officially revised the speech later, airbrushing the article in as if it was a Stalinist-era photo. And so the little speech was either 11 or 12 words long, depending on the version one prefers.

Nineteen minutes later, it was Buzz Aldrin’s turn to back out the hatch. Armstrong had his camera out and filmed the whole thing.

Aldrin: “Now I want to…partially close the hatch, making sure not to lock it on the way out.”

Armstrong: “A good thought.”

Being locked out of the spacecraft? Was this even possible? Was this some kind of comedy routine? “You’ve got three more steps and then a long one.”

Aldrin hopped off, and the long one proved a bit too long for him. As he made contact, he felt the urine bag in his left boot break open, and felt warm urine flowing around his foot. He decided not to say anything; he knew he had an “open mic” and that the world was listening. “Magnificent desolation,” said Aldrin instead, quickly demonstrating his forte of being more articulate than his commander.

He then joined Armstrong, taking “one small squish” and many others as he walked the surface helping to set out various arrays of experiments. They also hurriedly gathered some soil samples, just in case a later emergency necessitated a quick departure. Whatever else might happen, they weren’t going to leave empty-handed.

Then the men heard from Houston, asking them to pose in front of the TV camera while they accepted a phone call from the President.

Poor Richard Nixon. This whole Moon thing was a nightmare. It had been his archrival’s idea, and he had to stand by gamely listening to announcers forever alluding to Apollo as meeting John F. Kennedy’s visionary goal. Nixon hated Kennedy, the man who had beaten him in 1960. Kennedy had been charming and handsome, Nixon gawky and homely; it had been the suave patrician versus the used-car salesman with the five o’clock shadow. Kennedy, now dead from an assassin’s bullet for six years, had been popularly elevated to the stature of saint and martyr. For his part, Nixon was embroiled in an increasingly unpopular war, and this Moon landing should have offered both distraction and glory to the president of the nation that had pulled it off – except it was Kennedy’s name that was still attached to it!

Yes, Nixon disliked the whole Apollo business, and indeed canceled the final three flights as soon as he could pull it off. But now, always the consummate politician, he wasn’t about to let the limelight shine anywhere so brilliantly without stepping into it himself – even it happened to be off-planet. While Armstrong and Aldrin stopped their work to essentially stand motionless at attention, breathing their canned oxygen, Nixon rambled on: “Neil and Buzz, I am talking to you from the Oval Office of the White House…” Nixon continued for 160 words while the men stood in the glaring sunlight, Aldrin in his wet, urine-soaked boot.

At the White House’s insistence, Nixon had also affixed his name and his signature to plaques attached to the LEM’s legs that would be left on the Moon at each of the Apollo landing sites. His was the only repeating name on all of the plaques, a total of 12 “Richard Nixon” signatures at the various lunar locales. They should remain legible in the Moon’s airless environment for many millions of years. Long after the human race is either gone or evolved to something unrecognizable from today’s version, aliens landing on the Moon in the far future and finding these plaques might well wonder who this “Richard Nixon” was, what unique accomplishment or status justified having his recurring name alone chosen as the only one to survive the human race.

Armstrong is gone, but one thing has not changed: This remains a strange universe.