WhenNeil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the Moon, he said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind". Recordings of Armstrong'sApollo 11 transmission do not provide evidence for the indefinite article "a" before "man", leading to some controversy about whether he said the word or not. After years of Armstrong andNASA insisting that the static obscured it, Armstrong conceded that he must have dropped the "a" after carefully listening to the recording. Several scientific analyses have been conducted with some suggesting that he did say the "a" and others suggesting that he did not. As a result, the "a" is often included in brackets in the quote.
TheLunar ModuleEagle landed on the Moon as part ofApollo 11 in 1969. After Armstrong andBuzz Aldrin were ready to go outside,Eagle was depressurized, the hatch was opened, and Armstrong made his way down the ladder.[1] At the bottom of the ladder, while standing on aLunar Module landing pad, Armstrong said, "I'm going to step off the LM now." He turned and set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56UTC July 21, 1969,[2] then said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."[3] The exact time of Armstrong's first step on the Moon is unclear.[4]
When Armstrong made his proclamation,Voice of America was rebroadcast live by theBBC and many other stations worldwide. An estimated 530 million people viewed the event,[5] 20 percent out of a world population of approximately 3.6 billion.[6][7]
Armstrong prepared his famousepigram on his own.[8] In a post-flight press conference, he said that he chose the words "just prior to leaving the LM".[9] In a 1983 interview inEsquire magazine, he explained toGeorge Plimpton: "I always knew there was a good chance of being able to return to Earth, but I thought the chances of a successful touch down on the moon surface were about even money—fifty–fifty ... Most people don't realize how difficult the mission was. So it didn't seem to me there was much point in thinking of something to say if we'd have to abort landing."[8] In 2012, his brother Dean Armstrong said that Neil showed him a draft of the line months before the launch.[10] HistorianAndrew Chaikin, who interviewed Armstrong in 1988 for his bookA Man on the Moon, disputed that Armstrong claimed to have conceived the line during the mission.[11]
People have speculated that the line was inspired byThe Hobbit byJ. R. R. Tolkien, in whichBilbo Baggins's jump overGollum is described as "not a great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark". After leaving NASA in 1971 and moved to a farm inLebanon, Ohio, Armstrong named the farm "Rivendell", a valley in Tolkien's works. In the 1990s Armstrong also had email address related to Tolkien. Armstrong however has said that it was only after Apollo 11 that he read the works of Tolkien. People have also speculated that the idea for the quote may have come from an April 19, 1969, memo byWillis Shapley in which he wrote "the first lunar landing as an historic step forward for all mankind". Armstrong said however that did not remember reading the memo.[12]
Recordings of Armstrong's transmission do not provide evidence for the indefinite article "a" before "man",[3] resulting in "man" having the same perceived meaning as "mankind" rather than "a person".[13] NASA and Armstrong insisted for years that static obscured it. Armstrong stated he would never make such a mistake, but after repeatedly listening to recordings, he eventually conceded he must have dropped the "a".[3] He later said he "would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it was not said—although it might actually have been".[14] There have since been claims and counter-claims about whether acoustic analysis of the recording reveals the presence of the missing "a";[3][15]Peter Shann Ford, an Australian computer programmer, conducted a digital audio analysis and claims that Armstrong did say "a man", but the "a" was inaudible due to the limitations of communications technology of the time.[3][16][17] Ford andJames R. Hansen, Armstrong's authorized biographer, presented these findings to Armstrong and NASA representatives, who conducted their own analysis.[18] Armstrong found Ford's analysis "persuasive".[19][20] LinguistsDavid Beaver andMark Liberman wrote of their skepticism of Ford's claims on the blogLanguage Log.[21] A 2016 peer-reviewed study again concluded Armstrong had included the article.[22] NASA's transcript continues to show the "a" in parentheses.[23]
Q: Did you misspeak?
A: There isn't any way of knowing.
Q: Several sources say you did.
A: I mean, there isn't any way ofmy knowing. When I listen to the tape, I can't hear the 'a', but that doesn't mean it wasn't there, because that was the fastest VOX ever built. There was no mike-switch — it was avoice-operated key or VOX. In a helmet you find you lose a lot of syllables. Sometimes a short syllable like 'a' might not be transmitted. However, when I listen to it, I can't hear it. But the 'a' is implied, so I'm happy if they just put it in parentheses.
Armstrong guarded the use of his name, image, and famous quote. When it was launched in 1981,MTV wanted to use his quote in itsstation identification, with the American flag replaced with the MTV logo, but he refused the use of his voice and likeness.[24] He suedHallmark Cards in 1994, when they used his name, and a recording of the "one small step" quote, in a Christmas ornament without his permission. The lawsuit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, which Armstrong donated toPurdue University.[25][26]
WhenPete Conrad ofApollo 12 became the third man to walk on the Moon, on November 19, 1969, his first words referenced Armstrong. The shorter of the two, when Conrad stepped from the LM onto the surface he proclaimed "Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me."[27]
Things named after the quote includea 1999Star Trek: Voyager episode, the 2008 documentary filmOne Small Step: The Story of the Space Chimps, as well asa 2018 animated short film,a 1990 novella and the 2019 non-fiction bookOne Giant Leap.
The sculpture of Armstrong atPurdue University has an inscription of the quote.[28]
The quote has been described by Richard Gray forweather.com as the most famous disputed quote in history.[29] Ian Crouch ofThe New Yorker has described the quote as "among the most famous proclamations of the [20th] century".[13]
In December 2020, the One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act was enacted, to protect American lunar landing sites.[30]
When he tried to match the air-to-ground transcript to an audiovisual recording, he found that the transcript was behind—and that one of the records had to be wrong about the time of Armstrong's first step.
Yes, I did think about it. It was not extemporaneous, neither was it planned. It evolved during the conduct of the flight and I decided what the words would be while we were on the lunar surface just prior to leaving the LM.
| Launch complexes |  | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ground facilities | |||||||||||
| Launch vehicles | |||||||||||
| Spacecraft and rover | |||||||||||
| Flights |
| ||||||||||
| Apollo 8 specific | |||||||||||
| Apollo 11 specific | |||||||||||
| Apollo 12 specific | |||||||||||
| Apollo 13 specific | |||||||||||
| Apollo 14 specific | |||||||||||
| Apollo 15 specific | |||||||||||
| Apollo 16 specific | |||||||||||
| Apollo 17 specific | |||||||||||
| Post-Apollo capsule use | |||||||||||
| Related | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
