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Fifty years ago, on July 20, 1969, mankind set its first step down on the moon. It’s crazy to think about how much of an amazing achievement that was, given the state of technology at the time, and how dangerous space travel was. Seriously. From oxygen leaks and broken buttons to crash landings and getting lost in the wilderness, there’s no shortage of accidents, near misses and fucking terrifying episodes of space exploration.
Only click those post links if you’re brave and not claustrophobic at all.
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In any case, when the Apollo 11 rocket took off on July 16th, hopes were high that we’d reach the moon. And when we did, it was perhaps one of the greatest achievements of mankind.
But behind the scenes it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. In fact, NASA had a whole contingency plan about what they’d do if things went tragically wrong.
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If you ask anyone over the age of 50, they’ll tell you all about the televised moon walk and the call between President Nixon and the two men on the lunar surface; Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. Calling from a landline, he told the men how proud he, and the rest of the world, were of them, and ow now, the “heavens are a part of man’s world.”
At the same time, however, he had an alternate script beside his phone; the one he’d read if things went south, as well as the numbers to Armstrong and Aldrin’s potentially soon-to-be-widowed wives.
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Because, here’s the thing. You can only prepare so much, and do so much training and check and triple check everything, before you just place your faith in the hands of fate and go for it.
And after the lunar module touched down in the Sea of Tranquility that night, there was absolutely no guarantee that Aldrin and Armstrong would be a able to make it back to the orbiting command module where Michael Collins was waiting, let alone, back home to Earth.
So, given that, Nixon had a speechwriter prepare some words and a contingency span, in the event of a moon disaster.
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According to the experts, piloting the lunar module back into orbit to meet the command module was one of the riskiest parts of the Apollo 11 mission. While Apollo 10 had done a similar exercise of detaching, moving close to the moon, and reattaching, this was the first time there’d be a return to orbit from the surface.
If it didn’t work, the men would be abandoned on the surface of the moon to die. Think about that. They’d either suffocate, starve or be forced to commit suicide.
In that case, NASA would be forced to close down communication and commit the men to space, and hope that Collins would make it back.
In the meantime, Nixon would have given this speech:
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We all know now, that the mission was a success, but there was a moment where it wasn’t. According to Aldrin, when the men were moving around in the lunar module cabin, they accidentally damaged a circuit breaker that would have controlled the craft’s engines.
Thankfully, Aldrin was able to reach into the broken circuit with a ball-point pen, and jiggle it around, thus starting the engines.
Holy shit.
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This undelivered speech lay hidden for over 30 years, until it was found in some documents, and published.
I can’t imagine Nixon, or anyone having to give this speech.
Can you imagine knowing that you’re thousands of miles away from your homeplanet, and have a guaranteed horrible death? And for the wives and children of the astronauts, to know that your loved one isn’t even going to die on Earth, but in the cold vacuum of space?
That is probably the most terrifying fate ever conceived.
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The speech concludes with instructions for calling the widows and then, at the precise moment that NASA ends communication for good, the same procedure for burial at sea would have commenced, to commit those men to the deepest, darkest eternity of space.
It’s mind blowing to know that there was a plan for failure that was more of a certainty, than success.
I, and I’m sure the rest of the world, am glad that Nixon never had to give this speech, and it stayed buried because it’s a short-form horror story that’s all too possible.
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The scary part of it, though, is that these men knew. They were informed of the odds. They knew the reality, and knew that the moon might be their final resting place. And they went anyways.
If that doesn’t define them as the ultimate badasses and heroes of the planet, I don’t know what does.
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