Misquotations
People always remember the first words Neil Armstrong said when taking his famed steps: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
People remember these words, even if they remember them incorrectly. They’d quote them back to Neil on Earth, on park benches, and on airplanes and, once, when he was standing in line at the pharmacy, waiting to pick up blood pressure medication.
Years later, in one of the only interviews he ever gave, Neil clarified the quote to a historian over the phone: “I guess I wasn’t speaking real clear or something. I said ‘one small step for a man.’ ‘For a man,’ not ‘for man.’ I wasn’t trying to make myself all big like that, like I’m somehow the universal man. I’m just a guy.”1
On the other end of the line, the historian was silent. The historian considered, but didn’t mention, the fact that, in some sense, Neil Armstrong was the first universal man—quite literally, the first man to step out from Earth into the greater universe.
The historian decided not to print Neil’s quote. He figured Neil had already had to discuss this quote enough—and besides, the interview was already far too long.
Since the historian never printed Neil’s clarification, no one knows it exists.
Since no one knows it exists, it might as well not.
Jokes
Neil Armstrong liked to make up outlandish facts about the moon, e.g., it really is made of cheese, and there really is a man up there, and—don’t believe the astronomers—it really does have a dark side. When people wouldn’t know how to respond to these comments, Neil had his own little punchline: “I guess you just had to be there.”
(Some people, though, say that’s just an urban legend, that Neil never would have made anything up, that someone else made it up about Neil. Just for a laugh.)
The Liminal Zone
After they returned to Earth, the three astronauts—Neil, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin—were quarantined for three weeks before they could be released and deemed safe to be around other human beings. On the way back, Neil had repeatedly asked Mission Control if this containment was really necessary. That he missed his wife, missed her horribly; that he hadn’t wanted to leave her in the first place; that he had been in a small box for months; that he just wanted to come back home.
His request was denied. NASA wanted to be sure that no lunar organisms or diseases had somehow smuggled their way on board.
Neil knew that this was bullshit. That the real disease was contagious, yes, but its spread would be impossible to prevent. That the world had been irrevocably changed by the act of leaving it, that the astrophysicists who had put this mission together had performed mankind’s first real disappearing act. He knew this world would no longer be enough for some, fact and fiction now blurred, science and magic now impossible to tell apart for anyone aside from a skilled practitioner.
Still, he found that he didn’t mind three more weeks with Buzz and Michael. In a weird way, the containment felt like being back up there.
The three of them played cards and met President Nixon through a window. Neil’s 39th birthday took place during the quarantine. They slotted his cake into the gap through which all their food got sent. Neil pretended to offer slices to family members watching on the other side of the glass, and rubbed his belly tauntingly, as though the cake were extraordinarily, preposterously good.
The cake was extraordinarily, preposterously good. It was the first piece of cake he’d had since coming home. In a way, Neil mused to himself, it was the first piece of cake he’d had on this planet, because the place he thought he’d lived didn’t seem to be the same world since he’d returned to it.
Another Trip Around
Once the quarantine was lifted, NASA sent Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins on a 39-day goodwill tour that was dubbed “Giant Leap.”
The “Giant Leap” tour started in Mexico City, on September 29, 1969; encompassed 27 cities and 24 countries; involved meeting with a variety of dignitaries, ranging from the Pope to the Queen of England to the Shah of Iran; ended on November 5, 1969, in Washington, DC.
Also in autumn 1969: the Manson Family spree; a coup in Libya brings Qaddafi to power; Fred Hampton is murdered by the FBI; William Calley is charged for My Lai, ultimately serving only three years of house arrest; Zodiac takes his final victim in San Francisco; the Vietnam draft begins in earnest; the free Altamont Concert costs lives. In September, an annular solar eclipse occurs; having no light of its own, the moon disappears as well.
This is what Neil did, unconsciously, every time he looked out at the crowds or shook the hand of some grinning, garrulous world leader: he moved his foot slightly, as if to take a step.
This is what Neil thought, consciously, when he moved his foot slightly, every time he looked out at the world he returned to: what giant leap?
Conspiracies
The pushback began in the late 1970s, following the publication of a supposed tell-all by a former naval officer who’d worked loosely on the space mission between 1960 and 1963. The former naval officer (whose name is known, and cited below, but is perhaps best not remembered) said he’d long had “a hunch, an intuition” that space travel wasn’t technically possible.2 This former naval officer went on to say that eventually, his hunch, his intuition—had turned into a “true intuition.”3
When Neil was told about the former naval officer’s book, which was titled We Never Went To The Moon, he chuckled. “In a way, he’s right,” he said. “We didn’t.”
To his surprise, the conspiracy theorists never bothered Neil. He found a strange solace in the idea that his greatest journey was unverifiable, that truth should somehow necessarily engender lies, and that the thin veil separating the two was merely the façade of a shared experience, something two people could point to and imagine they were both seeing the same thing.
Moongazing, Pt. 1
“Q: If you can really capture yourself back, as the day clock's ticking for takeoff, would you every night, or most nights, just go out quietly and look at the moon? I mean, did it become something like, ‘my goodness’?
A: No, I never did that.”4
Great Moon Hoax
In 1835, Richard Locke, a writer for the London-based publication The Sun, published a series of six satirical articles claiming that astronomer John Herschel had developed a telescope powerful enough to observe life on the moon.5 This angered writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was concerned that Locke’s farce had plagiarized Poe’s own serialized hoax article that had run several years prior, concerning a man whom Poe claimed had traveled to the moon in a hot-air balloon.6
The moon observed all of this and did not bother to correct, corrupt, or contaminate any of the accounts.
Contamination
“Q: How serious a concern was there over contamination on return to the Earth? Was that something not just NASA, but yourself—how serious was that concern?
A: I don't know that I can say. As you know, the National Academy of Science was given the task of evaluating the potential danger from lunar contaminants on the Earth, and it was they who, I think, said the chances are extremely unlikely, and they gave a statistic which I won't attempt to quote, because I'm sure I'd have it wrong at this point.”7
Misquotations, Pt. 2
What people don’t usually remember are the second set of words Neil said as he walked the moon. Inexplicably, after his more memorable quotation, he muttered, as if to himself: “this one’s for you, Jablonski.” Even though Neil spoke the words softly, his mic picked up the vibrations and sent them back to Earth. No one at NASA knew what to make of it; the statement was never put down on the official transcript, and these words were never recorded.
Somehow, however, the statement was remembered.
On that same interview, years later, the historian asked Neil about this quote. Neil let out a bark of a laugh that made the historian pull the receiver from his ear.
“Oh, that. Well, one of our next-door neighbors growing up was this family, the Jablonskis. One night, I overheard ‘em yelling at each other—nothing crazy, just typical married-folks arguing. His wife was real pissed off. She said: ‘Blowjob?! Listen, buddy, you’ll get a blowjob when the kid next door walks on the damn moon.’ And I just kinda felt like I had to tell him the good news.”8
Moongazing, Pt. 2
Sometimes, Neil himself wondered if it had all been real. He would walk outside in the Ohio air and gaze at the night sky. He wondered about truth, and legend, and myth, and untruth, and how the lines between these things were not real lines, but only a blurry ether.
The moon was his friend, a kindly soul with whom he’d communed closely, once, on a night long ago. It told him that things would change when he returned; he hadn’t believed it at the time. It told him that when he was gone, people would remember his story, and they would also misremember it. That, in time, he would do both of these things, too.
Like most friends, though, there were times the moon appeared to secretly have it in for him. These were the times Neil would become convinced that the moon had ruined his life, that it had disrupted what was previously an unexceptional and satisfactory career as an everyday midshipman. Nothing had felt the same since he’d returned. Now, it seemed all out of order and slippery.
He’d walk outside and rage at the orb in the sky, fists raised, voice raised even higher. He’d rage until his unanswered torrent of abuse would seem pitiful, the act of some small thing trying in vain to wrap its arms around something too large to comprehend.
As soon as he quieted and acknowledged his futility, the rage would dissipate. Then, the moon would change without doing anything at all, its kindness appearing once more to him, regular as the tides.
Traces
Neil Armstrong’s footprints are still on the moon, since there is no wind or atmosphere to blow them away. There are no children running amok to make castles out of lunar dust, nor are there civilizations on the moon to wash over his marks with their own footsteps and accomplishments—not yet, anyway, although it is a certain eventuality that such things will one day occur, as everything that can happen will happen, if given enough time, and there is always enough time, since the temporal path stretches out into infinity and does not return in a form that can be recognized, no matter how brazenly or desperately one calls to it.
Jokes, Pt. 2
It’s said that Neil Armstrong hated any lionization he was granted—which means, of course, that he would hate this account of himself. But this humility allowed—and still allows—him to be depicted as such an immaculate figure. Norman Mailer (a decidedly maculate figure) described him as “of all astronauts the man nearest to being saintly” and “simply not like other men” and “apparently in communion with some string in the universe others did not think to play.”9
Of course, Neil hated all that shit even more.
Mementos
One time, Neil almost had to sue his barber of twenty years, Marx Sizemore, for selling his hair. Neil’s hair, that is. The hair had been sold for $3,000 to a buyer on something that Neil learned was called “eBay.”
Neil hadn’t heard about the transaction until he was vacationing in Colorado Springs over a year after the sale. Neil liked to ski. There was something cozily familiar about the way the bottom of his stomach seemed to fall out of him, right before he started down the slopes.
“Hey, by the way,” the skiing instructor had said, while they clutched cups of coffee in the lodge. “I know a guy who has your hair.”
The buyer of the hair, Todd Mueller, had initially felt elated that the Neil Armstrong was calling him. That elation quickly faded to panic over the idea that he’d pissed off the Neil Armstrong by buying his hair. Todd would later recall that hearing Neil’s disbelief over the phone made him realize just how creepy the acquisition really was.
“He told me you’d agreed to it,” Todd said, while Neil silently awaited an explanation on the other end of the line. “Jesus. I’m so sorry.”
Neil had gone down to see Marx in person to confront him. Neil was like that.
Marx had stared at his feet while Neil berated him. “I didn’t think you would ever find out,” was all Marx could say in response.
“Three options,” Neil said. He held up three fingers in the Scout’s Honor salute, thumb over pinky (Neil hadn’t done this since his Eagle ceremony). “One, you return the guy’s money and get my hair back. Two, you donate the cash to a nonprofit organization of my choosing. Three, I sue the ever-loving shit out of you.”
According to unverified reports, the three thousand dollars went to an undisclosed charity.
Neil Armstrong’s Favorite Ice Cream Flavor (As Told To MAD Magazine)
“Pistachio. No, wait…Rocky Road. Although, I will say that a good vanilla, a truly top-notch vanilla—not the cheapo Breyer’s stuff, mind you—is severely underrated…no, wait, actually…”10
Neil Armstrong’s Favorite Ice Cream Flavor (As Told To Forbes Magazine)
“Graeter’s Black Raspberry Chip.”11
Origins
“Q: Here you are, a test pilot, and you're flying the most advanced aircraft in the world. What makes you at that point in time want to join the astronaut corps? What is it that made you decide, ‘This is what I want to do’?
A: It wasn't an easy decision. …recognize that people who are in this world see projects come and go…I can't tell you now just why in the end I made the decision I did, but I consider it as fortuitous that I happened to pick one that was a winning horse. But there would be no way to predict that at the time when it got to that fork in the road. It's probably true that I was less inclined to be concerned about just what job I had than some were. I think they're all different people, they all had different kinds of views on that subject. It wasn't as obvious to me as some of the stories I've read have portrayed it.”12
Near Misses, Pt. 1
The October 1929 crash that precipitated the Great Depression took place ten months before Neil’s birth. This event and its accompanying economic collapse so disturbed Neil’s father, Stephen Koenig Armstrong, that Stephen found himself unable to make love to his wife for several months, save for an isolated incident on or around November 5, 1930.
During a 1951 Korean War mission, Neil’s wing was caught by a booby trap that exploded part of the wing.
In 1956, while transporting a supersonic aircraft, three of the four engines crapped out on the Boeing B-29 that he was flying.
In 1968, Neil was practicing with a Lunar Research Vehicle when he lost control of the craft, ejecting only moments before it burst into flames.
In 1978, Neil’s wedding ring got caught in a grain truck wheel, tearing off the tip of his finger. Surgeons were ultimately able to reattach the appendage—although it did negatively affect Neil’s ability to skeet shoot, a fact he would eternally and consistently bemoan.
Memorials
There aren’t many in American history who’ve escaped scandal—scandal is an American staple, after all—but Neil Armstrong appears to be one of the lucky few. So far, that is. All accounts say he was a private man who shunned the spotlight. That posture could be read in multiple ways. Was he a genuinely unassuming Cincinnatus who just wanted to return to his normal life? Or did he have things to hide from the greater public? Who knows what lies in the cavities of history, the data points that remain unrecorded? Is it possible to refrain from mentally filling in the gaps?
Gaps
The Giant Leap tour was over on November 5, 1969. Nine days later, on November 14, NASA launched Apollo 12, and the people on that capsule would eventually take the second steps on the moon. These people spoke those words, and they existed, and they are part of history, too, lying unacknowledged between the letters and words and section breaks that make up the commonly accepted record of notable space travel.
One of those people was a man confusingly named Charles “Pete” Conrad. Charles/Pete had made a bet with an Italian journalist named Oriana Fallaci,13 who claimed that Armstrong’s first words were not authentic; that they had been pre-written for him by NASA—a ghastly accusation. Charles/Pete bet Oriana $500 that Neil’s words were not preordained by some state agency—that they were an authentic outpouring that arose from the moment itself. Charles/Pete further wagered that he would make his own words up when he followed in Neil’s literal footsteps.
Charles/Pete’s first words when stepping on the moon were “Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me."14
In Oriana Fallaci’s later career, Fallaci would lambast Ayatollah Khomeini about the “medieval” regime he had imposed on Iran.
Even Henry Kissinger would endure the most “disastrous” interview of his career at her hands.”15 These words are quoted from an article in AmericaSpace, even though using other people’s words is ghastly.
According to unverified reports, she never followed through on the wager, and never paid Charles/Pete the $500 he was owed.
Near Misses, Pt. 2
Neil Armstrong was not among the group of applicants to the first human spaceflight program. Program Gemini was only open to military test pilots. The second program, Program Mercury, was open to civilians.
Still, Neil barely made the cut. His application arrived several days past the deadline for Project Mercury. A friend from previous aerial experience saw his name, and recognized the Neil Armstrong, and put his application in the pile before anyone noticed.
It was among the final times his name would not be recognized.
Traces, Pt. 2
Neil had signed hundreds of autographs in the days before the Apollo 11 mission, once the names of the astronauts had been announced. He figured that if the mission turned out to be unsuccessful and he perished on board, his family would need some way of earning income, and they’d at least be able to monetize the signature of the first civilian astronaut. Insurance companies refused to offer them life insurance for the expedition, because the idea of men walking on the moon seemed so utterly impossible.
But once he made it back, and people started to believe, things changed.
Things Change
Upon his return, Neil Armstrong was notoriously reticent to give autographs.
He found it gross the way people would shove photos or odd bits of paper in his face for him to sign, as if he hadn’t already signed his name a million times before, on checks and high school yearbooks, and it hadn’t been worth a dime.
He found it disturbing how much he enjoyed signing his name, and he quickly tried to stub out his own grandiose impulses.
He thought it was strange how people needed some proof of having met him, proof provided by his donation of a simple scrawl of his own name. Frequently, he used an autopen. He got a perverse little kick over the idea that even when he was writing his name, there was a way in which he wasn’t.
He remembered, any time he wrapped his hand around a pen, how he’d stared back at Earth and blocked it out with his thumb. For that moment he stood there, thumb aloft in a perfect hitchhiker’s pose, his world had ceased to exist, and he had come from nowhere.
When he walked on the beach, far from his home in Ohio, he liked to turn around and stare at the imprints his feet had made in the sand. The waves would wash over them until the marks he had made disappeared. Then he’d go back the way he came.
Strange Places
SCENE: Purdue University, Neil’s alma mater, November 12, 2010, Neil Armstrong Medal of Excellence ceremony for Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger—also a Purdue alum—awarded for his heroic actions landing a commercial aircraft in the Hudson River after both engines were disabled.
NEIL: (Shakes hands with Sullenberger.) Congratulations. Welcome to the “pilots who land in strange places” club.
SULLY: (Chuckles.) And where does the club meet?
(beat)
NEIL: (Gazing at something in the distance.) I… I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.16
In Event of Moon Disaster
When Neil and his tripmates met the President (Nixon), said President expressed his “great honor” at welcoming them (the tripmates) back home. They (Neil and the tripmates) chatted with Nixon (the President) about whether they (the tripmates) got seasick, and the President (Nixon) asked if they (the tripmates) were rooting for the American League or the National League in Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Neil responded by saying, “Neither,” which made Nixon (the President) smile and remark: “Ah. There’s the politician in the group.”17 (The President, Nixon, was referring to Neil.)
Another version of the story could have gone very differently.
In the event of moon disaster—which is to say, in the event that the astronauts did not return from their mission—the President had a speech written that memorialized the men for their bravery. The speech was titled “In The Event of Moon Disaster.” It opened with the statement that “fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.”18
The speech continued: “In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.”19
It concluded: “For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”20
O Captain, My Captain
On June 3, 1969, a few weeks before Neil walked on the moon, Star Trek: The Original Series aired its final episode. Its star, William Shatner, remembered watching Neil’s steps after the show’s cancellation, contemplating how he’d never play Captain James T. Kirk again.
“I was at a very low point watching this very high point,” Kirk said. “I had signed something saying, ‘See you on the moon.’ And there was Neil Armstrong, walking on the moon.”21
Shatner would have another high point of his own after all. Over fifty years later, he’d become the oldest person to travel to space at the rosy old age of 90. He remembered the experience, after his own return to Earth: “I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”22
In the only photo of Neil Armstrong on the Apollo 11 mission, Neil had tears in his eyes.
Fragility
“Q: I've read interviews in which astronauts have used the word how ‘fragile’ it is, looking at the Earth. It's a lovely phrase.
A: And I think everybody shares that observation, and I don't know why you have that impression, but it's so small, it's very colorful—you know, you see an ocean and gaseous layer, a little bit, just a tiny bit, of atmosphere around it, and compared with all the other celestial objects, which in many cases are much more massive, more terrifying, it just looks like it couldn't put up a very good defense against a celestial onslaught.”23
The Moon Speaks, Pt. 1 (A Celestial Onslaught)
What would you say if I chose this moment to speak to you more directly, momentarily breaking that so-called fourth wall—which is less of a wall, really, more of an atmosphere, an ether, a gradient, a mist—what would you say if I told you that some of this was fact and some was not? What if I filled in all the missing gaps with every piece of truth I could get my little lunar hands on? What gaps would remain? What if I lied about the amount of lies I’ve been telling? Do you blame me if I make things up about Neil Armstrong, given that I’ve already told you he made things up about me? I have no light of my own, remember, I have zilch, zero, I can only reflect what the sun has given me—in other words, I have no energy of my own to generate, I have nothing to offer that isn’t something already given to me, so—what would you say if I told you there is no Neil Armstrong, there is no you, and there is no I—that there is just we, the one of us, talking to ourselves, a concurrent reflection and mirror, posing unanswerable questions as we careen down the winding temporal path—careening together, because we can’t not be together, because an object is always with itself—making odd and arbitrary little distinctions between “out there” and “in here”? Would you resist such statements, demand demarcation, find some unsatisfactory-but-workable taxonomy? Would you surrender to it, to all of it, to all that exists and does not, to some unified mapping of the imaginary and the real? Would you both resist and accept these contentions simultaneously, recognizing that even a distinction between surrender and acceptance is itself only imposed by convention and necessity? Is this the point where you crumple these pages up in annoyance, or click off to some better, more satisfactory digital world, because of course we can navel-gaze and deconstruct and pontificate like kids in a dorm room getting stoned for the first time, but, uh, this is supposed to be a story (isn’t it?), so it’s supposed to have ground-level, basic stuff and it doesn’t have those things—things, like, uh, I don’t know, a beginning and an ending, a consistent narrative voice, some actual, you know, characters, and a plot, a build of tension, artifices of fiction that somehow ring truer than truth? Also, just how pretentious is this thing that’s speaking, and is its rant almost over?
For that matter, is this story-that’s-maybe-lying-about-being-a-story almost over? The shtick’s getting old—where’s the ending—Where’s the fucking ending?
(Don’t worry—there are no correct answers to these questions, just as long as you’re honest. If there’s one thing Neil Armstrong couldn’t stand, it was a liar.)
We
“Q: I was going to ask about the relations between mission controllers and the astronaut corps. You just characterized it during this period—I guess you did—as pretty good. You felt there was respect for each other's job. But did tensions flare? ‘Hey, you don't realize what we're dealing with, guys?’
A: Sometimes it did. We were fortunate with that on the flights I was involved in. I don't think we had any problems of any significant magnitude in that category. Generally, the people in flight and the people in mission control were on the same frequency most of the time.
Q: There was not a ‘we’ and ‘them’?
A: No. It's ‘we’ and ‘we.’”24
Afterword, Prematurely
There’s a secret in the underground dungeons frequented by Silicon Valley billionaires: the ghost of Neil Armstrong haunts anyone who takes steps to travel to space without purity of intent. As soon as the first schematics are laid down, the job postings listed, the LLC established, Neil’s ghost comes to them in a dream, harangues them with one question: “Why on earth do you want to go—don’t you know what’s awaiting you up there? Don’t you know what you’re leaving behind?”
The Riddle of the Sphinx (Answered)
Neil Armstrong’s ashes were scattered into the Atlantic Ocean, making him the first to be born on earth, walk on the moon, and then buried at sea.
The Moon Speaks, Pt. 2 (The Moon Surrenders)
Okay, fine. Fine. Here’s the ending. Here’s your stupid ending. My ending. Our ending. It’s also a beginning, if we read it right—and, if you remember, we can’t read it wrong.
It’s true, by the way, it’s all true. Except for the parts that are made up.
See you on the other side.
The Return Journey
Neil had always known: the hardest thing hadn’t been going to the moon. The hardest thing had been coming back. The first had taken more money, more resources, more hours of work, and yet he knew the second was harder, because this part was the part he wasn’t ever sure that he accomplished.
Maybe, in some way, the conspiracy quacks were right, he mused to himself. Maybe there had been something fishy about the mission to the moon and back, the landing and return, how seamless it all was. Maybe he wasn’t remembering things clearly, the scenes seeming to slip in and out of sequence. Maybe they’d left him up there, or maybe he’d chosen to stay and send someone else back to Earth in his place, or maybe this was all a hallucination. Maybe leaving the world rendered one wholly incapable of ever being able to report back to the place that had been left behind.
He had bypass surgery two days after his 82nd birthday. Mercy Faith Hospital was in Cincinnati, a thirty-minute drive from his home in Lebanon. In some sense, he’d known it was coming. He’d had a heart attack several years prior on a ski lift. He felt fragile. He felt like he’d survived an onslaught. After that, he referred to his heart as his “bum ticker,” and made sure to avoid saturated fat and overexertion and anything that might piss him off.
Still, his bum ticker kept ticking.
At first, the operation appeared to have gone smoothly. Neil was recovering well. But when the nurses disconnected the pacemaker, his blood pressure had dropped alarmingly. They’d later learn that he’d begun bleeding internally. The hospital took too much time bringing him to the catheterization wing. He didn’t go back into surgery for nearly two hours after the pacemaker had been disconnected.
Neil stayed cognizant through it all. He knew he was headed past the point where truth and lies mattered anymore, past the point of distinctions, past the point of no return.
His last words were to his wife and sons as they gathered around his bed. They were a mixture of other people’s words—of fact, and fiction, and myth—which is to say that they were just like everything else.
“It’s all right,” said Neil. “It’s alright. Stop crying. It’s okay. Don’t worry. I’m just going home. I’ll see you up there. I’ll see you on the other side.”
People don’t remember these words, as they were never recorded. ◆
1 According to multiple reports, Neil Armstrong conceded that he dropped the “a.”
2 Kaysing, Bill. We Never Went To The Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle. 1976. I Don’t Know The Publishing House. You Think I Actually Kept That Farce Of A Book Long Enough To Read The Publisher’s Page?
3 Ibid.
4 NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Transcript. “Neil Armstrong, Interviewed by Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose and Dr. Douglas Brinkley.” Sept. 19, 2001. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/armstrongna-9-19-01.pdf?emrc=3e9891.
5 New York Times. July 23, 1928. https://www.nytimes.com/1928/07/23/archives/the-great-moon-hoax.html
6 Stephanie Hall. “Belief, Legend, and the Great Moon Hoax.” Library of Congress Blogs. https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2014/08/the-great-moon-hoax/
7 NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Transcript. “Neil Armstrong, Interviewed by Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose and Dr. Douglas Brinkley.” Sept. 19, 2001. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/armstrongna-9-19-01.pdf?emrc=3e9891
8 ERR: URBAN LEGEND.
9 Mailer, Norman. Of a Fire on the Moon. 2014. Random House.
10 #ERR: CITATION NOT FOUND.
11 Some Forbes article. I Don’t Know. It’s All Secondhand Information. The Quote Occurred, Just Trust Me On That. Wait, Hang On. Maybe It Was This Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/teriluciethompson/2012/09/10/neil-armstrong-ode-to-trustmarks/ Does That Sound Right?
12 Ibid. Or, Wait. Not Ibid. It’s The NASA Interview With Stephen Ambrose. But That Was Already Cited. Just Go Look At That One.
13 Pronounced: oh-ree-AH-nah fah-LAH-che (differently from the pronunciation of the word “fallacy”).
14 Uri, John. 50 Years Ago: Apollo 12 on the Moon – “Whoopee!!” NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/history/50-years-ago-apollo-12-on-the-moon-whoopee/
15 Evans, Ben. 45 Years Since Apollo 12: The $500 Bet and the Lightning Strike (Part 1). Americaspace. Is That Actually A Website? Turns Out, Yes. Yes, It Is. Here’s The URL: https://www.americaspace.com/2014/11/11/remembering-apollo-12-the-500-bet-and-the-lightning-strike-part-1/
16 #ERR: CITATION NOT FOUND.
17 Remarks to Apollo 11 astronauts aboard the U.S.S. Hornet following completion of their lunar mission. | The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-apollo-11-astronauts-aboard-the-uss-hornet-following-completion-their-lunar (Accessed: 28 June 2026).
18 “Safire Memo.” In Event of Moon Disaster. Richard M. Nixon. /https://www.archives.gov/files/presidential-libraries/events/centennials/nixon/images/exhibit/rn100-6-1-2.pdf
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Bryan Alexander. “William Shatner Remembers ‘Star Trek’s Cancellation As A Low Point In My Life.’ Sept. 7, 2021. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2021/09/07/star-trek-day-william-shatner-low-point-after-tv-cancellation/5758281001/
22 William Shatner. Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder. Simon & Schuster.
23 NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Transcript. “Neil Armstrong, Interviewed by Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose and Dr. Douglas Brinkley.” Sept. 19, 2001. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/armstrongna-9-19-01.pdf?emrc=3e9891.
24 Ibid.
Homepage Image Credit: Ixchel Tonantzin Xochitlzihuatl, Final Teaching: Jaguar in the Stars, from Gulf Coast Summer/Fall 2025, Issue 37.2
