Apollo 11: forgotten history & urban myths

So many repeated rumours have grown up over time surrounding the first steps on the moon that it is sometimes hard to tell history from myth.

 

Relive the Apollo11 mission 40 years on with Enjoy Space’s photo special (click here for number one). 4 decades on certain inaccuracies have gained ground even though they are totally untrue. A brief review of Apollo 11‘s forgotten history and urban myths.

Urban myth: the photo of the first step

Credit: NASA

The above photo is frequently presented as one of the first step on the moon. In fact, Neil Armstrong put his left foot down just next to the pad on the end of the landing foot (its mechanism can be seen in this special). It was so soft that not only was his footprint probably very shallow but it was doubtless erased as the area was trampled underfoot when he and his colleague Buzz Aldrin climbed back into the Lunar Module. This photo was taken approximately one hour after the first step. Buzz Aldrin deliberately jumped up and sank his boot as deeply as possible into the lunar surface and took a series of photos which could be studied by scientists.


Forgotten history: the Soviets wanted to walk on the moon

Credit: DR

Common wisdom which is much more widespread that we think. The moon race actually never took place, the United States was the only runner as the USSR ambitions were limited to an unmanned programme... In fact, the Soviets even designed, built and launched a moon rocket similar to the American Saturn V on 4 occasions. The N1 (see above photo) was designed to take a cosmonaut to our natural satellite to demonstrate the supremacy of the communist system. However, divided between several different initiatives that accentuated the personal and political infighting the soviet programme ran into a whole series of hitches. Thus the 4 N1 rocket launches from 1969 to 1971 (test flights without cosmonauts on board) ended in failure every time.


Urban myth: Mr Gorsky’s luck

Credit: NASA

When he was on the moon, Neil Armstrong uttered the enigmatic phrase: «Good luck Mr Gorsky». This was because many years earlier when the young Neil went to fetch his baseball from the neighbour’s he overheard the lady in a squabbling couple refusing to give her husband a certain type of conjugal right. The recalcitrant wife then yielded, promising to do so when the ”kid across the street walks on the Moon”. A condition that she naturally thought would never happen. Neil Armstrong has on many occasions stated that it was entirely untrue. However the below the belt joke still persists in spite of everything.


Forgotten history: good will messages

Credit: NASA

The raising of the American flag on the moon. A gesture which is often interpreted as a demonstration of supremacy. During the Cold War period, the United States did indeed intend to remind everyone that they were the first to set foot on our natural satellite. However, the star spangled banner was also a patriotic message to American taxpayers who had financed the Apollo programme through their taxes. However, the other nations were invited to be symbolically present on the moon’s surface. NASA made a silicon disk less then 4cm in diameter featuring engravings of good luck messages written by the heads of state. However, out of the 116 countries contacted, only 73 responded in time with notable absences such as all of the Eastern Bloc nations (due to the Cold War) and even France. It is necessary to point out that the response time was unusually short (less than one month) for such an official request. The disk was left on the surface of the moon by the astronauts shortly before the end of their moonwalk without any form of ceremony, which merely contributed to the initiative fading from memory.


Urban myth: Aldrin refused to photograph Armstrong on the moon

Credit: NASA

Jealous not to be the first man on the moon, Buzz Aldrin «made sure» that he never photographed Neil Armstrong on the moon... In fact they all had a jam-packed programme of tasks to accomplish in their 2 hour and 36-minute moon walk. Also, there was only one Hasselblad camera adapted to cope with the lunar environment and it was Neil Armstrong that used it the most of the time! Buzz Aldrin only had his hands on the famous Swedish box for a brief moment. So he took a photograph of his footprint (sometimes mistakenly believed to be that of the first step) and this photo of Neil Armstrong near the Lunar Module (above).


Forgotten history: NASA’s legal problems

Credit: Alan Light - CCby2.0

Shortly after landing on the moon, Buzz Aldrin announced over the radio that he invited people to reflect on the meaning of the event and then performed a short communion (pouring some wine into a small chalice and swallowing a wafer) in a very discreet manner, never mentioning the religious nature of his own meditation. However, during Apollo 8, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders performed a reading from Genesis to conclude a televised transmission whilst orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately the militant American atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair (1919-1995, pictured here on a photo from 1983) then claimed that NASA had breached the first amendment of the United States constitution guaranteeing freedom of religion (she claimed that the American agency had promoted one religion over the others by reading from Genesis). Consequently, she filed a suit before the Supreme Court. As the legal action was in progress during Apollo 11, NASA asked its astronauts to avoid all strong religious references, an order scrupulously respected by Aldrin. In April 1970, the United States Supreme Court rejected O’Hair’s complaint.


Urban myth: the missions were filmed in a studio

Credit: NASA

Apollo 11 and the other lunar missions were nothing more than a huge State hoax. It was all filmed in a studio. It all started when author Bill Kaysing (1922-2005) published a book which went largely unnoticed on its release in 1974 entitled «We never went to the moon ». However, this untrue theory, based on systematically false technical analyses, went on to seduce large numbers of conspiracy theory fans and has gained ground with the rise of the Internet. Many appear to have forgotten that Bill Kaysing was soon discredited when he persisted in purporting that telecommunications or Earth observation satellites didn’t actually exist and that their functions were actually performed by camouflaged airships! Finally, some peoples’ prime motivation in peddling the conspiracy theory is to sell their latest book or DVD.


Forgotten history: a team of 400 000 people

Credit: NASA

The three Apollo 11 astronauts have often repeated that they were merely the tip of an iceberg which overshadowed the work of the over 400 000 people throughout NASA and the numerous industrialists and subcontractors that took part in the American moon programme. On 23 July 1969, when the trio were on their way back to earth, Michael Collins declared in a televised transmission that: «All this is possible only through the blood, sweat, and tears of a number of a people». Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong added to their comrade’s comments stating that Apollo 11 had only been possible due to humanity’s ongoing effort to understand and explore the world around us. The Apollo 3 like to remind us of this fact to this day in statements or interviews so that the team spirit is never forgotten.

Published on 13 july 2009