One thing you seemed to leave out, Cecil, was that Armstrong must have been asked a skillion times about what his impression of the “lost a” – how about a quote from the lips of the lips that uttered it?
Granted, you have a limit to the number of words in your article, but I think you made a journalistic boo-boo.
People just USE a PC, but Mac owners LOVE their Mac
tpuffies
You must be talking about this column, right? http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_362.html
But Cecil does quote Armstrong. He says he said “a man.” It’s in the third sentence of the second paragraph of Cecil’s reply.
C’mon, Puffies, lighten up!
In 1969, when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, I was watching every minute! It was July and I was out of school.
I had been weaned on Mercury and Gemini ‘space shots.’ They used to cancel school for this stuff! Until he became a senator from my state, I thought John Glenn was a certified hero! (Now he’s just another certifiable liberal dork, but that’s another story…)
The fact that Armstrong could be heard – in real time, while setting foot on the moon – was almost more than my compatriots and I could believe! We considered and accepted the obvious ‘staticky’ nature of what we heard. Heck, we were used to Walter Cronkite TELLING us what we were hearing from earlier astronauts!
My point is that technology – be it audio, video, whatever – wasn’t quite the same in '69 as it is now. Most of us watched then – breathlessly – on black & white TV’s. Even a cursory review of the audio track recorded by Armstrong will give a sense of the unreliability of radio communication over a distance of a quarter-million miles, under 1/6 G and in a space suit designed more to protect the man from the lack of atmosphere and the -300 deg. F temperatures than to enhance his ability to bestow us all with immortal words.
The audio sounded like hell. He might have said practically anything. I figure what he said was whatever he says he said.
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
Since he was only broadcasting from a back lot in Burbank, you would think that the audio would have been a little clearer. And as for the camera work…
I once lost my corkscrew and had to live on food and water for several days
(W.C. Fields)
In fact, the latest audio analysis of the historic words conclusively prove what many of us have long believed: In a bow to his corporate masters in Iowa, Armstrong really said: ‘That’s one small step for Amana . . . one giant leap for mankind.’
Louis Armstrong went to the MOON?
Every time he played, Ike. Every time he played.
Livin’ on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine
Amen, Manhattan, Amen!
Not amen, “a man”. Or maybe “man”. Don’t go making it any worse.
I seem to recall that in his book, A Man on the Moon, Andrew Chaikin says that Armstrong always refused to be drawn on the “lost a” question.
Hopw did Armstrong feel about being drawn on the “Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky.” phrase? Was that ever actually said?