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For months before the liftoff, the commander of Apollo 11 had endured the entreaties of thousands of friends, coworkers, and strangers. They all wanted to know: What would be the first words of the first man on the moon?
Skilled in engineering and aeronautics, astronauts tended to be "just the facts, ma'am" kind of guys. This particular question, though, preoccupied Armstrong.
He later explained that his words were inspired by the children's game Baby Steps, Giant Steps. Many assumed that U.S. Information Agency officer Simon Bourgin had drafted the statement (Bourgin had contributed to previous Apollo statements). Others at NASA tried to take control of the comment, until press officer Julian Scheer put a stop to all the chatter by asking, "Did Isabella tell Columbus what he would say in advance?"
There's also the issue of the missing word a (as in, "One small step for a man"). The statement doesn't make sense logically in the way it has been recorded. Armstrong has always insisted that he said it correctly. "The a was intended," he said later. "I thought I said it. So [I'd] be happy if it's put in parentheses." [To hear Armstrong's actual historic statement from the moon, go to history.nasa.gov and search for one small step.]
A NASA executive later told a reporter that, with the "one small step" statement, the taciturn Armstrong surprised everyone: "Yes or no from him [was] a big conversation." And Armstrong's son, Rick, then 12 years old, said, "Usually when you ask him something, he just doesn't answer."
The Step
After Eagle landed and the hatch opened, Aldrin guided Armstrong as he slowly crawled backward in his bulky space suit.
The debarkation through the narrow doorway of Eagle's "porch" was more difficult than anticipated, as this transcript of the astronauts' conversation makes clear:
Aldrin: Neil, you're lined up nicely. Toward me a little bit. Down. Okay. Now you're clear … Roll to the left … You're lined up on the platform. Put your left foot to the right a little bit.
Armstrong: Okay? How am I doing?
Aldrin: You're doing fine.
During this maneuver, Armstrong forgot to turn the handle releasing the equipment assembly hatch, where most of the equipment that would be used on the moonwalk, including a TV camera, had been stowed. Mission Control reminded him, so Armstrong pulled himself back up, released it, and then continued climbing down. When Walter Cronkite, during the CBS television broadcast, asked why the descent to the surface was taking so long, astronaut Rusty Schweickart replied to the TV, "[Armstrong] doesn't have eyes in his rear end."
Houston: Standing by for your TV [transmission].
Armstrong: Houston, this is Neil. Radio check.
Houston: Neil, this is Houston. Loud and clear. Buzz, this is Houston. Verify TV circuit breaker in.
Aldrin: Roger, circuit breaker's in.
Then suddenly, it happened: The ten-by-ten screen at Mission Control bloomed to life. The huge assembled crowd began cheering as they witnessed Armstrong's foot touch another world for the first time in history.
That step was really not so small, by the way. From the last rung of the ladder to the surface of the moon, it was a three-and-a-half-foot drop.
The Surface
The moon was lit by a sun unfiltered by any atmosphere, with one-sixth gravity that inspired hardened pilots to act like eight-year-old boys and a top dust as soft as the powdered beaches of Cancún.
Aldrin told a reporter, "When you put your foot in the powder, the boot print preserved itself exquisitely. When I would take a step, a little semicircle of dust sprayed out before me. It was odd; the dust didn't behave at all the way it behaves here on earth."
Armstrong said, "[The moon] has a stark beauty all its own, like much of the high desert of the United States. It's different but very pretty."
An awestruck Aldrin called it "magnificent desolation."
Across the monochrome lunar vista of white highlands and black cratered seas were colored shots of sparkle, later identified as either volcanic glass or particles produced by the pounding of meteorites. The other unique quality of being on the moon, both men reported, was the pronounced curve of the horizon. "The horizon seems quite close to you," said Armstrong.
Just as dramatic was the vast difference between lunar shade and light. "The light was sometimes annoying because when it struck our helmets from a side angle, it would enter the faceplate and make a glare that reflected all over it," Armstrong said. "As we penetrated a shadow, we would get a reflection of our own face, which would obscure everything else."
Without atmosphere, lunar vistas were brilliantly clear, like the earth's after a drenching rain but even more striking, as if the landscape seemed to roll on forever. Returning lunar visitors were filled with a near-religious feeling, citing "unreal clarity."
"I felt buoyant and full of goose pimples when I stepped down on the surface," Aldrin said.
Overhead was no blue sky, but one infinite expanse of velvet black.
The Conflict
Deeply embedded in NASA's genetic code, the U.S. Navy had a long tradition of not allowing the commander of the ship to be the first to enter unknown territory. Five months before the mission, a Times-Picayune news article claimed that Apollo 11's "flight plan as now drawn calls for Aldrin to climb down the ladder from the lunar module shortly after touchdown. Forty-five minutes later, the Apollo commander, Neil A. Armstrong, will join him." The article added that the "disclosure of Aldrin as the choice comes as a surprise to many who had speculated that the top commander would be entitled to take his place in history. But the space agency said that the decision is not Armstrong's to make."
George Mueller, the manned spaceflight associate administrator, confirmed that Aldrin would be first man out. At the same time, though, flight crew operations director Deke Slayton told Aldrin that Armstrong would probably be first: The commander had seniority.
Flight director Chris Kraft later recalled, "In all the early plans, it was the lunar module pilot [Aldrin]. Buzz desperately wanted that honor and let it be known." At the space center before the launch, Aldrin "came flapping into my office like an angry stork, arguing that he, the lunar module pilot, and not Armstrong, should be first down the ladder," astronaut Gene Cernan remembered.
Aldrin said, "Clearly, the matter was weighing on [Neil], but I thought that we knew and liked each other enough to discuss it candidly. Neil equivocated a minute or so; then, with a coolness I had not known he possessed, [he] said that the decision was quite historic and he didn't want to rule out the possibility of going first."
The confusion finally forced a decision by the agency's highest executives. "I thought about it," said Kraft. "The first man on the moon would be a legend, an American hero beyond Lucky Lindbergh, beyond any soldier or politician or inventor. It should be Neil Armstrong. I brought my ideas to Deke and then to George Low [manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office]. They thought so too." Armstrong would be the one.
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