Buzz Aldrin makes his historic walk on the moon. But what if he hadn't been able to leave again?
On July 20, 1969, nearly forty years ago, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first two men to land on the moon. It is, undisputedly (faked moon landing conspiracy theorists notwithstanding), one of the most important moments in the history of mankind. If one thinks about it now, four decades after the fact, it is still quite a remarkable feat.
Aldin and Armstrong landed the Lunar Module Eagle (hence the famous line “…the Eagle has landed…”) almost wihtout a hitch and ascended from the lunar surface nearly without incident. Nothing went perfectly, but everyone on the Apollo 11 mission made it home safely.
Yet, it wasn’t a safe mission. Everyone was prepared for every eventuality, including President Richard Nixon.
For the past forty years, a memo from Bill Safire, Nixon’s speechwriter, to White House chief of staff Harry Haldeman, has been sitting quietly in an archive. This memo is entitled “In the event of Moon disaster” and includes the speech the President would have made had Aldrin and Armstron become stranded on the surface of the moon.
Nixon would have addressed the nation and, by association, the world with the following speech:
Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.
These brave men know there is no hope for their recovery but they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
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.
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.
Thankfully, it was not a speech that the world had to hear. Yet, I’m glad that it survived in the archives in order that my generation and the ones that follow can better understand the danger and the importance of an event that seems to have abandoned the public imagination in exchange for the dry pages of history texts.
T. Keith Edmunds
