AT&T coughed up a recording of a very long distance phone call...to the Moon

"Tech Time Warp of the Week: Watch President Nixon Dial the Moon in 1969"

by

Daniela Hernandez

February 21st, 2014

Wired

President Nixon placed countless phone calls from the Oval Office, but there was one he called the most historic call ever made from the White House: His phone call to the moon.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, millions watched on television as they climbed from their spacecraft, bounded across the lunar surface, and planted an American flag. They also saw the Apollo 11 astronauts take a long-distance call–a very long distance call–from the president.

“This certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made from the White House,” Nixon told them. “Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man’s world, and as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to earth.”

In the video below, you can watch the call in all its grainy, low-def glory. It was routed from Washington to Mission Control in Houston, and from there, it bounced to Manned Space Flight Network dish antennas scattered around Earth, traveled 238,000 miles to the Apollo Lunar Module, and finally hopped to its ultimate destination: antennas attached to the backpacks carried by Armstrong and Aldrin. Armstrong’s response was then transmitted back to the Oval Office.

It all went relatively smoothly–if you can forgive the low-grade audiovisuals. “For all its historic importance, it was basically an engineering test mission. Hence the ghostly, somewhat jumpy black and white images and the often crackly audio from the moon,” says WIRED Science blogger David S. F. Portree, a space exploration historian at the U.S. Geological Survey.

The call used technology developed by the Air Force, USGS, and several corporate contractors, including AT&T’s BellComm, one of the smallest subsidiaries of the Bell System. BellComm, formed at NASA’s request in 1962, employed scientists plucked from the legendary Bell Labs. “It was a huge team effort, with nearly half a million people across the United States involved at its height,” Portee says, referring to the Apollo project as a whole. “To me, that’s one of the really inspiring things about it. Americans came together and accomplished amazing things.”

After bidding the president goodbye, Aldrin and Armstrong crawled back into their space capsule for the three-day journey home. On July 24, together with fellow astronaut Michael Collins, they splashed down about 920 miles off the coast of Honolulu. They were promptly picked up by the USS Hornet, and once aboard ushered into a mobile quarantine facility–a modified camper–where they would spend 21 days. NASA wanted to make sure the astronauts weren’t carrying alien germs that could exterminate life on earth.

Once sealed inside, they got to meet President Nixon. He was on the opposite side of a thick glass window, and the chat wasn’t nearly as impressive as a presidential call to the moon.

Apollo 11--not first

Maybe Apollo 11 wasn't the first...

Woman in the Moon

by

Fritz Lang

1929

Part 1



Part 2

Apollo 11 crew...doing "what" now

Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr.

"Where are they now? Apollo 11 crew"

July 19th, 2009

Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.---- In the 40 years since Apollo 11, some of the key players, most notably Neil Armstrong, have steered clear of the increasingly bright glare of the moonlight cast by the historic lunar landing.

Almost all have written books detailing not only themselves but the glory days of space.

On this anniversary of his "one small step" on July 20, 1969, Armstrong, the commander, remains an enigma, steadfastly declining almost all interviews. He did not chronicle his own life, but agreed to a biography, "First Man," written by a historian and published in 2005.

Command module pilot Michael Collins, who circled the moon on while Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored its dusty surface, is just as elusive. He's not sure "recluse," though, is the right word.

"I think of the Brown Recluse, the deadliest of spiders, and I have a suntan, so perhaps," Collins wrote in a statement for NASA to get journalists and others off his case. "Anyway, it's true I've never enjoyed the spotlight, don't know why."

Aldrin, on the other hand, seems to be everywhere, plugging everything from radios to designer handbags, and signing copies of his new book.

------

Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11's commander, keeps a low profile in his home state of Ohio.

He shuns the spotlight but when he does address crowds, he is a thoughtful speaker and exceedingly modest.

"I recognize that I'm portrayed as staying out of the public eye, but from my perspective it doesn't seem that way," Armstrong said in a 2001 interview for NASA's oral history project. "But I recognize that from another perspective, outside, I'm only able to accept less than 1 percent of all the requests that come in, so to them it seems like I'm not doing anything. But I can't change that."

He added: "Looking back, we were really very privileged to live in that thin slice of history where we changed how man looks at himself and what he might become and where he might go. So I'm very thankful that we got to see that and be part of it."

He will turn 79 on Aug. 5. He left NASA in 1971 and returned to Ohio, where he continues to live near Cincinnati. He taught engineering at the University of Cincinnati, then ventured into business.

------

Buzz Aldrin, the omnipresent lunar module pilot, has a new book out, "Magnificent Desolation." That was his description of the moonscape after he followed Armstrong down the ladder.

The book focuses on his post-lunar life, and his battle with depression and alcoholism.

He says it has been a challenge, since landing on the moon, to "carry on with the rest of your life." There is "this uneasiness and this uncertainty as to what I really ought to be doing."

Now 79, Aldrin lives in the Los Angeles area but is often on the road with wife Lois.

He still looks remarkably fit. In 2002, he punched, right in the face, a much bigger and younger man who was hounding him and trying to get him to swear on a Bible, on camera, that he walked on the moon. That's what he thinks of those who claim the Apollo moon landings were staged in a studio in the Nevada desert. His astronaut buddies still chuckle over it.

Aldrin, the only one on the crew with a doctorate, left NASA and returned to Air Force active duty in 1971. He's written several books, including space fiction, and is the apparent namesake of Buzz Lightyear of "Toy Story" fame.

------

Michael Collins, the command module pilot who circled the moon, has written several books about space, most notably 1974's "Carrying the Fire." It's considered one of the best insider space books ever, little surprise given Collins' eloquence and wit.

Like Armstrong, Collins, 78, avoided the anniversary limelight. He did, however, release a list of the questions he's frequently asked -- along with his answers -- to mark the occasion.

"Did you have the best seat on Apollo 11?" he wrote. "No."

"Were you happy with the seat you had?" he continued. "Yes, absolutely. It was an honor."

He considers himself neither a hero nor a celebrity, and more than a little grumpy as he ages.

"Heroes abound and should be revered as such, but don't count astronauts among them," he wrote. "We work very hard; we did our jobs to near perfection, but that was what we had hired on to do."

Luck played a big part in his life, Collins noted.

"Usually, you find yourself either too young or too old to do what you really want, but consider: Neil Armstrong was born in 1930, Buzz Aldrin 1930, and Mike Collins 1930. We came along at exactly the right time. We survived hazardous careers and were successful in them. But in my own case at least, it was 10 percent shrewd planning and 90 percent blind luck. Put LUCKY on my tombstone."

As for "any keen insights?" His response: "Oh yeah, a whole bunch, but I'm saving them for the 50th."

Collins left NASA in 1970 and became the first director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. He now splits his time between Boston and Florida's Gulf Coast.

Deceased--Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite
November 4th, 1916 to July 17th, 2009

A beloved commercial television news anchor [CBS], Walter Cronkite has died. When Apollo 11 lifted off: he uttered "Go, baby, go!" A sense of national pride and excitement rarely shared now.

"Walter Cronkite, Voice of TV News, Dies"

by

Douglas Martin

July 18th, 2009

The New York Times

Walter Cronkite, who pioneered and then mastered the role of television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that he was called the most trusted man in America, died Friday, his family said. He was 92.

From 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite was a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one, guiding viewers through national triumphs and tragedies alike, from moonwalks to war, in an era when network news was central to many people's lives.

He became something of a national institution, with an unflappable delivery, a distinctively avuncular voice and a daily benediction: "And that’s the way it is." He was Uncle Walter to many: respected, liked and listened to. With his trimmed mustache and calm manner, he even bore a resemblance to another trusted American fixture, another Walter — Walt Disney.

Along with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on NBC, Mr. Cronkite was among the first celebrity anchormen. In 1995, 14 years after he retired from the "CBS Evening News," a TV Guide poll ranked him No. 1 in seven of eight categories for measuring television journalists. (He professed incomprehension that Maria Shriver beat him out in the eighth category, attractiveness.) He was so widely known that in Sweden anchormen were once called Cronkiters.

Yet he was a reluctant star. He was genuinely perplexed when people rushed to see him rather than the politicians he was covering, and even more astonished by the repeated suggestions that he run for office himself. He saw himself as an old-fashioned newsman — his title was managing editor of the "CBS Evening News" — and so did his audience.
"The viewers could more readily picture Walter Cronkite jumping into a car to cover a 10-alarm fire than they could visualize him doing cerebral commentary on a great summit meeting in Geneva," David Halberstam wrote in "The Powers That Be," his 1979 book about the news media.

As anchorman and reporter, Mr. Cronkite described wars, natural disasters, nuclear explosions, social upheavals and space flights, from Alan Shepard’s historic 15-minute ride to lunar landings. On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, Mr. Cronkite exclaimed, "Oh, boy!"

On the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Mr. Cronkite briefly lost his composure in announcing that the president had been pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Taking off his black-framed glasses and wiping away a tear, he registered the emotions of millions.

It was an uncharacteristically personal note from a newsman who was uncomfortable expressing opinion.

"I am a news presenter, a news broadcaster, an anchorman, a managing editor — not a commentator or analyst," he said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor in 1973. "I feel no compulsion to be a pundit."

But when he did pronounce judgment, the impact was large.

In 1968 he visited Vietnam and returned to do a rare special program on the war. He called the conflict a stalemate and advocated a negotiated peace. President Lyndon B. Johnson watched the broadcast, Mr. Cronkite wrote in his 1996 memoir, "A Reporter’s Life," quoting a description of the scene by Bill Moyers, then a Johnson aide.

"The president flipped off the set," Mr. Moyers recalled, "and said, 'If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.'"

Mr. Cronkite sometimes pushed beyond the usual two-minute limit to news items. On Oct. 27, 1972, his 14-minute report on Watergate, followed by an eight-minute segment four days later, “put the Watergate story clearly and substantially before millions of Americans” for the first time, the broadcast historian Marvin Barrett wrote in "Moments of Truth?" (1975).

Mr. Cronkite began: "Watergate has escalated into charges of a high-level campaign of political sabotage and espionage apparently unparalleled in American history."

In 1977, his separate interviews with President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel were instrumental in Sadat’s visiting Jerusalem. The countries later signed a peace treaty.

"From his earliest days," Mr. Halberstam wrote, "he was one of the hungriest reporters around, wildly competitive, no one was going to beat Walter Cronkite on a story, and as he grew older and more successful, the marvel of it was that he never changed, the wild fires still burned."

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born on Nov. 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Mo., the son of Walter Leland Cronkite Sr., a dentist, and the former Helen Lena Fritsche. His ancestors had settled in New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony that became New York. As a boy, Walter peddled magazines door to door and hawked newspapers. As a teenager, after the family had moved to Houston, he got a job with The Houston Post as a copy boy and cub reporter, inspired to go into the news business by a high school journalism teacher. At the same time, he had a paper route delivering The Post to his neighbors.

"As far as I know, there were no other journalists delivering the morning paper with their own compositions inside," he wrote in his autobiography.

When he was 16, Mr. Cronkite went with friends to Chicago for the 1933 World’s Fair. He volunteered to help demonstrate an experimental version of television.

"I could honestly say to all of my colleagues, 'I was in television long before you were,' " he said in an interview with CBS News in 1996.

Mr. Cronkite attended the University of Texas for two years, studying political science, economics and journalism, working on the school newspaper and picking up journalism jobs with The Houston Press and other newspapers. He also auditioned to be an announcer at an Austin radio station but was turned down. He left college in 1935 without graduating to take a job as a reporter with The Press.

While visiting Kansas City, Mo., he was hired by the radio station KCMO to read news and broadcast football games under the name Walter Wilcox. (Radio stations at the time wanted to "own" announcers' names so that popular ones could not be taken elsewhere.)

He was not at the games but received cryptic summaries of each play by telegraph. These provided fodder for vivid descriptions of the action. He added details of what local men in the stands were wearing, which he learned by calling their wives. He found out in advance what music the band would be playing so he could describe halftime festivities.

At KCMO, Mr. Cronkite met an advertising writer named Mary Elizabeth Maxwell. The two read a commercial together. One of Mr. Cronkite's lines was, "You look like an angel." They were married for 64 years until her death in 2005.

Mr. Cronkite is survived by his daughters, Nancy Elizabeth and Mary Kathleen; his son, Walter Leland III; and four grandsons.

After being fired from KCMO in a dispute over journalism practices he considered shabby, Mr. Cronkite in 1939 landed a job at the United Press news agency, now United Press International. He reported from Houston, Dallas, El Paso and Kansas City.

The stint ended when he briefly returned to radio and then took a job with Braniff International Airways in Kansas City, selling tickets and doing public relations.

Returning to United Press after a few months, he became one of the first reporters accredited to American forces with the outbreak of World War II. He gained fame as a war correspondent, crash-landing a glider in Belgium, accompanying the first Allied troops into North Africa, reporting on the Normandy invasion and covering major battles, including the Battle of the Bulge, in 1944.

In 1943, Edward R. Murrow asked Mr. Cronkite to join his wartime broadcast team in CBS's Moscow bureau. In "The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism" (1996), Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson wrote that Murrow was astounded when Mr. Cronkite rejected his $125-a-week job offer and decided to stay with United Press for $92 a week.

That year Mr. Cronkite was one of eight journalists selected for an Army Air Forces training program that took them on a bombing mission to Germany aboard B-17 Flying Fortresses. Mr. Cronkite manned a machine gun until he was "up to my hips in spent .50-caliber shells," he wrote in his memoir.

After covering the Nuremberg war-crimes trials and then reporting from Moscow from 1946 to 1948, he again left print journalism to become the Washington correspondent for a dozen Midwestern radio stations. In 1950 Murrow successfully recruited him for CBS.

Though he wanted to cover the Korean War, Mr. Cronkite was assigned to develop the news department of a new CBS station in Washington. Within a year he was appearing on nationally broadcast public affairs programs like "Man of the Week," "It's News to Me" and "Pick the Winner."

In February 1953 he narrated the first installment of his long-running series "You Are There," which recreated historic events like the Battle of the Alamo or the Hindenburg disaster and reported them as if they were breaking news. Sidney Lumet, soon to become a well-known filmmaker, directed the series, which included top actors like E. G. Marshall and Paul Newman.

"What sort of day was it?" Mr. Cronkite said at the end of each episode. "A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. And you were there."

In 1954, when CBS challenged NBC's popular morning program "Today" with the short-lived "Morning Show," it tapped Mr. Cronkite to be the host. Early on he riled the sponsor, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, by grammatically correcting its well-known advertising slogan, declaring, "Winston tastes good as a cigarette should."

When not interviewing guests in his role as host, he mulled over the news with a witty and erudite puppet lion, Charlemagne. Occasionally he ventured outside the studio — using a tugboat, for example, to meet luxury liners so he could get interviews with celebrities before they landed.

In 1952, the first presidential year in which television outshined radio, Mr. Cronkite was chosen to lead the coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions. By Mr. Cronkite’s account, it was then that the term "anchor" was first used — by Sig Mickelson, the first director of television news for CBS, who had likened the chief announcer’s job to an anchor that holds a boat in place. Paul Levitan, another CBS executive, and Don Hewitt, then a young producer, have also been credited with the phrase.

The 1952 conventions made Mr. Cronkite a star. Mr. Mickelson, he recalled, told him: "You're famous now. And you're going to want a lot more money. You'd better get an agent."

Mr. Cronkite went on to anchor every national political convention and election night until 1980, with the exception of 1964. That year he was replaced at the Democratic convention in Atlantic City by Roger Mudd and Robert Trout in an effort to challenge the Huntley and Brinkley team on NBC, which had won the ratings battle at the Republican convention in San Francisco earlier that summer.

In 1961 Mr. Cronkite replaced Murrow as CBS’s senior correspondent, and on April 16, 1962, he began anchoring the evening news, succeeding Douglas Edwards, whose ratings had been low. As managing editor, Mr. Cronkite also helped shape the nightly report.

The evening broadcast had been a 15-minute program, but on Sept. 2, 1963, CBS doubled the length to a half-hour, over the objections of its affiliates. Mr. Cronkite interviewed President Kennedy on the first longer broadcast, renamed the "CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite." He also broadcast from a real newsroom and not, as Edwards had done, from a studio set.

At the time the broadcast was lengthened, Mr. Cronkite inaugurated his famous sign-off, "And that's the way it is." The original idea, he later wrote, had been to end each broadcast with a quirky news item, after which he would recite the line with humor, sadness or irony.

Richard S. Salant, the president of CBS News, hated the line from the beginning — it ate up a precious four seconds a night — and the offbeat items were never done.

"I began to think Dick was right, but I was too stubborn to drop it," Mr. Cronkite wrote.

Starting with Herbert Hoover, Mr. Cronkite knew every president, not always pleasantly. A top aide to President Richard M. Nixon, Charles Colson, harangued the network's chairman, William S. Paley, after Mr. Cronkite’s 14-minute Watergate broadcast. The next segment was shortened.

In 1960, during the Wisconsin primary, Mr. Cronkite asked Kennedy, then a senator, about his Roman Catholic religion. As Mr. Cronkite recalled in his memoir, Kennedy called Frank Stanton, CBS's president, to complain that questions about the subject had earlier been ruled out of bounds. He then reminded Mr. Stanton that if he were elected he would be appointing members of the Federal Communications Commission. Mr. Stanton "courageously stood up to the threat," Mr. Cronkite wrote.

By contrast, Mr. Cronkite's relations with President Dwight D. Eisenhower were so cordial that President Kennedy incorrectly assumed Mr. Cronkite, a political independent, was a Republican. (Eisenhower let Mr. Cronkite stay at a castle in Scotland to which the president had been given lifetime use.)

Mr. Cronkite also enjoyed the company of President Ronald Reagan, with whom he exchanged often off-color jokes. And he whimsically competed with his friend Johnny Carson to see who could take the most vacation time without getting fired.

Mr. Cronkite raced sports cars but switched to sailing so he could spend more time with his family. He liked old-time pubs and friendly restaurants; there was even one in Midtown Manhattan where his regular chair was marked with his initials.

In an interview with The New York Times in 2002, Mr. Cronkite scrunched his eyes and lowered his voice into a theatrical sob when asked if he regretted missing out on the huge salaries subsequent anchors had received.

"Yes," he said, adding, "I frequently call myself the Mickey Mantle of network news."

Mr. Cronkite retired in 1981 at 65. He had repeatedly promised to do so, but few had either believed him or chosen to hear. CBS was eager to replace him with Dan Rather, who was flirting with ABC, but both Mr. Cronkite and the network said he had not been pushed.

After his retirement he continued to be seen on CBS as the host of "Walter Cronkite's Universe," a half-hour science series that began in 1980 and ran until 1982. The network also named him a special correspondent; the position turned out to be largely honorary, though news reports said it paid $1 million a year. But after he spent 10 years on the board of CBS, where he chafed at the cuts that the network’s chairman, Laurence A. Tisch, had made in a once generous news budget, more and more of his broadcast work appeared on CNN, National Public Radio and elsewhere, not CBS.

By the time Mr. Rather was leaving the "CBS Evening News" in 2005 after 24 years at the anchor desk, Mr. Cronkite had abandoned mincing words. He criticized his successor as "playing the role of newsman" rather than being one. Mr. Rather should have been replaced years earlier, he said.

When Katie Couric took over the job in September 2006, Mr. Cronkite introduced her on the air and praised her in interviews.

His long "retirement" was not leisurely. When Senator John Glenn went back into space on the shuttle Discovery in 1998, 36 years after his astronaut days, Mr. Cronkite did an encore in covering the event for CNN. He made some 60 documentaries. And among many other things, he was the voice of Benjamin Franklin on the PBS cartoon series "Liberty's Kids," covered a British general election for a British network and for many years served as host of the annual Kennedy Center Honors.

He had already won Emmy Awards, a Peabody and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (in 1981), and he continued to pile up accolades. Arizona State University named its journalism school after him.

In July 2006, PBS broadcast a 90-minute "American Masters" special on Mr. Cronkite's career, narrated by Ms. Couric. Mr. Lumet, the filmmaker, appeared and said, "He seemed to me incorruptible in a profession that was easily corrupted."

On his 90th birthday, Mr. Cronkite told The Daily News, "I would like to think I’m still quite capable of covering a story."

But he knew he had to stop sometime, he allowed in his autobiography. He promised at the time to continue to follow news developments "from a perch yet to be determined."

"I just hope that wherever that is, folks will still stop me, as they do today, and ask, 'Didn't you used to be Walter Cronkite?'"

Apollo 11 star chart sells for $218k

"Apollo 11 chart fetches astronomical price"

Star navigation aid for lunar surface sold at auction for $218,000

July 16th, 2009

The Associated Press

NEW YORK - A navigational chart used by Apollo 11 astronauts has become the unexpected star of an auction in New York City marking the 40th anniversary of man's first lunar landing.

Bonhams New York said that the lunar surface star chart sold Thursday for an astronomical $218,000. The tool, with a 9-inch (23-centimeter) diameter, had been expected to bring in $70,000 to $90,000.

The device consists of two plastic discs riveted together. The lower disc shows Earth, the sun, planets and star patterns against a black background. The upper disc is a semi-transparent overlay that could be turned to calculate position.

The historic mission of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin began exactly 40 years earlier, on July 16, 1969, and came to a climax on July 20 with the moon landing. In a letter accompanying the sale item, Aldrin wrote that "this star chart was the single most critical navigational device we used while on the moon."

Among the expected highlights of the auction were three checklists from the landing's descent. Signed by Aldrin, the lot had been estimated to fetch $125,000 to $175,000. But the checklists failed to sell.

The sale contained about 350 items from a variety of space missions.

"For All Mankind"...40 years after Apollo 11

Al Reinert's For All Mankind won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1990 covering the Apollo 11 mission [including Apollo 1 and Apollo 7 through 10]. The film is available as a restored high-definition digital transfer from The Criterion Collection or you can watch it for free from NASA .

For All Mankind

Lunar mirror to be retired

"Among the project's unlikely achievements has been the discovery that the moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of two-and-a-half inches a year." A significant disclosure. In time the moon will lose its effect on the Earth and will alter Earth's physics.

"After 40 years' reflection, laser moon mirror project is axed"

US research that began with the first Apollo landing - and helped to prove that the moon is moving away from Earth - is to be axed.

by

Robin McKie

June 21st, 2009

The Observer

An experiment, begun when Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left a mirror on the lunar surface 40 years ago to allow Earth-based astronomers to fire lasers at it, has been ended by American science chiefs.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) last week wrote to scientists working at the McDonald Laser ranging station at Fort Davis in Texas to tell them the annual $125,000 funding for their research project was going be terminated following a review of its scientific merits.

The decision means that four decades of continuous lunar laser research at the McDonald Observatory, run by the University of Texas at Austin, will be halted by the end of this year. Among the project's unlikely achievements has been the discovery that the moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of two-and-a-half inches a year.

The mirror's existence, and the fact that astronomers can bounce lasers off it and detect the returning beam, has also provided Nasa and other scientists with compelling evidence to refute the claims of moon-landing deniers who claim the Apollo lunar mission were hoaxes filmed in an Earth-based studio.

"It is a bitter-sweet feeling to know this is going to come to end at McDonald," said Peter Shelus, head of the laser ranging project. "We have done a great deal of important work using the moon mirrors but it is clearly time for it to end. However, we are hopeful that this work will be continued at other astronomy centres."

The mirror left by Aldrin and Armstrong after they landed on the Sea of Tranquillity on 21 July 1969, was one of five known as "corner mirrors" or "retro-reflector arrays" that were taken to the moon in the later Sixties and early Seventies. Two other corner mirrors were brought to the moon by astronauts on later manned lunar flights, on the Apollo 14 and the Apollo 15 missions. In addition, a second pair were built by French scientists and flown to the moon by the Soviet Union on their robot Luna probes.

Corner mirrors are important scientific instruments because, when struck precisely by a laser beam, they reflect that beam in a parallel path straight back to the source of the laser.

"Essentially, we measure when that beam goes out and when it comes back," said Shelus. "We know the speed of light, of course, so that timing allows us to calculate the moon's distance with incredible precision."

After these laser measurements were amassed for years, calculations by astronomers at the McDonald Observatory showed that as the moon orbits Earth, it creates a bulge of water that travels round the planet behind it. This bulge - which we experience as tides - exerts a gravitational pull on the moon, slowing it down as it circles Earth at a distance of 240,000 miles.

As a consequence of being held back by this pull, the orbit of the moon becomes altered and it moves slowly away from Earth - at a rate of two-and-a-half inches a year. These measurements have, in turn, allowed scientists to carry out valuable tests of theories about relativity and gravity, added Shelus.

A spokesman from the NSF told the Observer last week that, after carrying out two reviews, it had decided there was no longer "a strong science case" for continuing its 40-year support for the lunar laser ranging project. The spokesman added that two other astronomy centres - at Apache Point in Texas and Observatoire de la Côte d'Azure in France - were expected to carry out lunar-ranging experiments in future.

"These are very good centres," said Shelus. "However, it does mean that the continuity of our measurements, which we have established since the Apollo missions, will now have to stop. It is, rather sadly, the end of an era."

Neil Armstrong's "One Small step..."...analysis

"One Small step..."

Is this really that important?

"Armstrong's 'poetic' slip on Moon"

by

Pallab Ghosh

June 3rd, 2009

BBC News

Neil Armstrong missed out an "a" and did not say "one small step for a man" when he set foot on the Moon in 1969, a linguistic analysis has confirmed.

The researchers show for the first time that he intended to say "a man" and that the "a" may have been lost because he was under pressure.

They say that although the phrase was not strictly correct, it was poetic.

And in its rhythm and the symmetry of its delivery, it perfectly captured the mood of an epic moment in history.

There is also new evidence that his inspirational first words were spoken completely spontaneously - rather than being pre-scripted for him by Nasa or by the White House.

In the recording of Neil Armstrong's iconic phrase he says: "One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind". However, "man" and "mankind" mean much the same thing in this context.

But on returning to Earth, he explained that he thought he had said "one small step for a man".

Explanations offered for the discrepancy are that perhaps transmission static wiped out the "a" or that Commander Armstrong's Ohio accent meant that his "a's" were spoken softly.

In 2006, an analysis by an Australian entrepreneur added credence to these explanations - as it found there was a gap for the "a". However, subsequent analyses disputed this conclusion.

To settle the argument, Dr Chris Riley, author of the new Haynes book Apollo 11, An Owner's Manual, and forensic linguist John Olsson carried out the most detailed analysis yet of Neil Armstrong's speech patterns.

They are presenting the research at the Cheltenham Science Festival this week.

"For me that phrase is of great significance," said Dr Riley.

"It has been an important part of my life and those words sum up much of the optimism of the later part of the 20th Century."

Using archive material of Neil Armstrong speaking, recorded throughout and after the mission, Riley and Olsson also studied the best recordings of the Apollo 11 mission audio ever released by Nasa.

They have been taken from the original magnetic tape recordings made at Johnson Space Center, Houston, which have recently been re-digitised to make uncompressed, higher-fidelity audio recordings.

These are discernibly clearer than earlier, more heavily compressed recordings used by the Australian investigation.

These clearer recordings indicate that there was not room for an "a". A voice print spectrograph clearly shows the "r" in "for" and "m" in "man" running into each other.

The researchers say the Australian analysis may not have picked up the fact that Armstrong drawled the word "for" so that it sounded like "ferr" and mistook the softly spoken "r's" for a gap.

"It's perfectly clear that there was absolutely no room for the word 'a'," Mr Olsson explained.

Riley and Olsson also concluded that Commander Armstrong and his family members do pronounce the word "a" in a discernible way.

And based on broadcasts from Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the surface of the Moon, it is clear that the word "a" was easily transmitted to Earth without being obliterated.

But their analysis of the intonation of the phrase strongly suggests Commander Armstrong had intended to say "a man". There is a rising pitch in the word "man" and a falling pitch when he says "mankind".

According to Mr Olsson: "This indicates that he’s doing what we all do in our speech, he was contrasting using speech - indicating that he knows the difference between man and mankind and that he meant man as in 'a man' not 'humanity'."

There has also been speculation that Neil Armstrong was reading from a pre-prepared script penned for him by another party. According to Mr Olsson, that is not borne out by Armstrong's body language and speech patterns.

"When you look at the pictures, you see that he's moving as he is speaking. He says his first word 'that's' at the moment he puts his foot on the ground. When he says 'one giant leap for mankind', he moves his body," he said.

"As well as this, there is no linking conjunction such as 'and' or 'but' between the two parts of the sentence. So it's for all those reasons that we think this is a completely spontaneous speech."

It may well have been that spontaneity that led to Armstrong's slight mistake. But according to Mr Olsson - Armstrong may have subconsciously drawn from his poetic instincts to utter a phrase that, far from being incorrect - was perfect for the moment.

"When you look at the whole expression there's a symmetry about this. If you put the word 'a' in, it would totally alter the poetic balance of the expression," he explained.

This makes Dr Riley feel that the research has made a positive contribution to the story of the Apollo mission.

"I’m pleased we've been able to contribute in this way and have hopefully drawn a line under the whole thing as a celebration of Neil and everyone involved with Apollo, rather than this constant little niggling criticism," he said.