10 Surprising Secrets From Apollo 11's Historic Moon Landing - D-brief
D-brief
By Carl Engelking |    July 18, 2014 12:08 pm
(Credit: NASA)
This year is the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the first time humans walked on the moon. The iconic imagery and audio from the mission is certainly seared into humankind’s collective consciousness, but there are a handful of side stories from the mission that are often overlooked. Here are some of the historical anecdotes that will change the way you remember man’s first foray on the moon.
10. “In the Event of Moon Disaster” 
Had the Apollo 11 moon landing gone horribly wrong, the world may have immortalized the words of William Safire, Richard Nixon’s speechwriter. You see, Safire had written a statement for Nixon to deliver in the wake of a hypothetical moon disaster. Rather than Neil Armstrong’s famous words, we may have committed an equally poetic phrase to memory: “Fate has ordained that men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.”
9. A Famous Misquote? 
When Neil Armstrong took his first step on the moon, he actually meant to say “That’s one small step for a man.” People have argued whether a shoddy radio connection caused the misquote, or if Armstrong had a case of global stage fright and skipped over the tiny, but important, word.
8. Speaking of Those ‘First’ Words…
Armstrong gets all the credit for uttering the first words on the moon, but “That’s one small step…” wasn’t the first lunar sentence spoken — technically. Bob Berman, Slooh astronomer and author of Zoom, tells a different story that came out of an interview with Aldrin years ago. Berman says Aldrin was actually the first man to speak on the moon, but his quote wasn’t nearly as sexy. When the lander touched down, Aldrin simply said, “OK, engines stop.”
(For more insider stories about the Apollo 11 landing, be sure to tune into Slooh’s live webcast of the moon’s surface in HD — complete with commentary from Berman and other special guests.)
7. Armstrong Was Too Good a Pilot
Although it seems counter-intuitive, Armstrong landed the Eagle too softly on the surface of the moon. Berman says Armstrong was supposed to cut the engines when the lander was a few feet from the surface. NASA scientists built the lander with legs that would crumple upon impact to absorb the shock. Since Armstrong was such an ace pilot, the lander’s legs never crumpled. As a result, the astronauts had to exit the lander several feet higher than intended, which means that first small step was more of a leap.
6. That’s One Soggy Step 
Armstrong was the first human to step foot on the moon, but Aldrin holds the title as the first man to urinate on it. Upon stepping foot on the moon, Aldrin promptly emptied his bladder into his space suit’s internal urine collector. Unfortunately, Armstrong’s piloting skills came back to haunt Aldrin: when he made his higher-than-expected leap from the Eagle, his urine collector broke upon sticking the landing. As a result, one of Aldrin’s boots filled with pee when he relieved himself, Berman says. Fully aware that he was on a live radio feed, Aldrin kept that bit of information to himself.
Buzz Aldrin (Courtesy: NASA)
5. The Moon’s Aroma
Have you ever wondered what the moon smells like? When Aldrin and Armstrong, caked with moon dust, returned to the Eagle lander, they reported that the moon smelled a bit like wet ashes and gunpowder. Pressurizing the cabin upon their return was in itself a worrisome operation: some folks believed lunar dust was flammable, and would ignite as soon as it came in contact with oxygen. Luckily, that wasn’t the case.
4. Broadcasting in HD
We all remember that iconic video feed beamed to hundreds of millions of earthlings in 1969, but the video was actually captured in higher quality than we ever saw. That’s because the camera captured video in a format that commercial television stations couldn’t broadcast. NASA used a scan converter to adapt the video for U.S. broadcast signals, but by the time the images appeared on home television sets, the feed was substantially degraded.
However, thanks to technology, you can watch restored versions of the moon landing .
3. A Mother’s Concern
There are myriad things a moonwalker’s mother could worry about, but Neil Armstrong’s mom had just one real concern: that the lunar crust was too delicate and wouldn’t support her son’s weight when he walked on it.
2. What We Left Behind
Although every man on the Apollo 11 mission returned to Earth safely, they left plenty of artifacts back on the moon. Some items, such as a golden olive branch, American flag, Apollo 1 patch and a moon memorial disk, served a symbolic function.
But there was also plenty of junk left behind, including television cables, a camera, urine and defecation collection devices, tongs and a hammer to name a few. NASA has compiled a list of every single item  the Apollo missions left behind on the moon.
1. A Second Chance
Aldrin may have never had the chance to walk on the moon because NASA turned down his initial application to become an astronaut. He tried again, and was accepted in the third group of astronauts in 1963; he became known as “Dr. Rendezvous.”
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Robert Karma
I thought I was up to date on all of the trivia about the space program after years of study but I have to admit I didn’t know that Buzz had urinated into his boot as he checked out the Magnificent Desolation of the lunar surface. He may not have been the first to walk on the moon but surely he was the first to pee on the moon!
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com Mike Oak
Neil Armstrong did say “one small step for ‘a’ man…” It’s the media that took the “a” away by removing it from a lot of subsequent copies. I suspect it made for a better “sound bite”. Please, you’re a science writer, you should have checked.
Mr. Shadow
Sorry, but Armstrong himself said that he said the phrase wrong.
Lilly
Mike;  Your comment is probably THE stupidest comment I’ve ever read on the internet ever about any subject.  Congratulations.  Wht do you do in your spare time besides playing with toilet paper rolls?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com Mike Oak
Trolling just makes you look like an even bigger jerk.
Redhands
lol
Mac
The ‘a’ didn’t come through in the transmission, if Armstrong did indeed say it.  I didn’t hear an ‘a’ at the time, and I thought what a strange comment, it doesn’t make sense, but if an ‘a’ is placed before ‘man’, Armstrong’s statement does make sense.
Before the landing, there had been a lot of speculation about what the first words from the moon would be, like “Uh, duh…”
ToSeek
“that first small step was more of a leap.”
This is inaccurate – the first small step was off the LM footpad. They did have to take a big leap off the ladder and onto the footpad, but that wasn’t onto the surface of the Moon.
Nedward Marbletoe
so the first footprint was from a small step.  kewl.
Sammy6
What a totally ‘guy’ thing to do.  We flew to the moon.  We landed there.  We peed on it.  Borrowing from the famous latin phrase, I came, I saw, I peed?
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Nevet
ROFL!
Lilly
So, what would a woman have done, held it until she got back to Earth 5 days later?  What a dumba$$ comment.  Get a grip.
SixSixSix
Needed a bigger mouthed pee collector. What else? Or a catheter – wow first catheter on the moon.
Sammy6
Somebody took an extra crabby pill this morning.  How hypersensitive do you have to be to take offense at a joke clearly aimed at the stupid things us guys do?   Hey, Lilly, the man-haters club called.  They’ve extended your platinum membership.
SeeToSee
Watch a few episodes of Honey Boo Boo if you need a crash course in female pee humor. Marking the moon or peeing our name in moon dust isn’t part of our biological makeup. We deal with biology-meets-clothing horrors well beyond pee in our boots, anyway.
James Cheatham
So that makes it ours?
Buddy199
A special kind of moron.  One might say fractally moronic.
Buddy199
So, NASA launched 18 manned missions in front of tens of thousands of spectators at Cape Canaveral that actually never went to the moon? Thanks for clearing that up.
BinaryWatcher
1. We spent billions and developed the entire Apollo program, all to hoax it? It wouldn’t be possible to do so without building – and launching – SOMEthing. AND
sending it all the way to the moon and back. Because radar observations and radio signals.
2. Which leads to the second point, we were deep in the Cold War, AND a space race with the USSR, and the Soviets were watching. They would have busted us for the fakery, and crowed about it for a thousand years.
3. And how many people were directly or closely related to the Apollo program? 250,000 or more? Yet we are supposed to believe that they’ve all kept their mouths shut
since? All of them? Impossible. Absurd.
imnottellingu
RIght.  My father helped put man on the moon and there is no way he could or would fake answers to all the questions I bombarded him with over the years.  Sorry.  Anyone who thinks this was fake is a moron.
BinaryWatcher
Of course, you know, imnottellingu, the True Believers just consider us insiders, part of the whole “conspiracy” that kept their ludicrous secret. Whatever. The Soviets sure weren’t, but they didn’t raise a protest.
Timothy Culley
Everything that is not at absolute zero looses heat through radiation whether in a vacuum or not. Objects shaded in space are receiving almost no heat from outside sources and so they cool very rapidly. Fast enough that a rotating spacecraft will loose more energy from its shaded surfaces than it gains from the surfaces with the sun shining on them. This is why manned spacecraft require heaters.
Don’t try to make a case that we can’t fly in space just because you misunderstand thermodynamics.
Brian
Where do you get your information. I’m curious. Are you yourself a scientist. Please respond to  B-Man  on Twitter
thank you.
I seriously doubt he is.
But I am.
Brian
I never got the chance to see any artifacts from the moon walk. Up here in Canada, we were barraged with all kinds of info.
Lorie Franceschi
Think about this:  If a vacuum has no molecules than what you are saying about cold and heat has a big flaw in it, which means since there are none of the little guys to move around there is no movement to generate heat, so, by inference, there is cold.
There are many other Items that you tried to “explain” about the Apollo missions that are totally wrong and have no merit.
Make sure you understand what you are talking about before you start babbling.
Nedward Marbletoe
Australian aborigines sya they went to the moon, but I don’t think they left footprints.
Haywood Yablowmie
It wasn’t “engines stop”, it was “engine stop”.  There was only one descent engine.
z4luvr
Best quote was when Aldrin jumped down from the LEM and said, “That may have been one small step for Neil, but it sure seemed like a big one to me!”
Nordguy
That wasn’t Aldrin. That was Pete Conrad on Apollo 12
z4luvr
Sorry – should have known that.  Pete Conrad was a funny guy.
darryl
Apparently Pete won a bet from a reporter who didn’t believe that he could say what he wanted to when he first walked.  I guess he never did get paid his $1500.
-d
Luke101
What do we have now to be proud of?
-Nothing but a stupid and useless ISS,  that was a moronic pc inspired idea in the first place.  We could have built a moon base by now…..
BinaryWatcher
No. Originally we were working on Space Station Freedom, an entirely US-based construct. It wasn’t until the politicians in DC got involved that it suddenly got designated an INTERNATIONAL space station.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com Eric Lipps
“The politicians in DC” were involved form day one. Where do you think the money came from? And the station became an international project because of the money; making it multinational meant other countries could be gotten to chip in.
BinaryWatcher
Unfortunately not. I was active in the program at that time, though i was working Shuttle, not Station — but I had plenty of colleagues who crossed between the programs, so I’m well aware of what was happening. NASA went forward with a budget that included SSF, and it was approved as a domestic station. The next president to enter office was the one who determined – pretty much unilaterally, from what I could tell – that it was going to be international. As for other countries chipping in, not so much as you might think. E.g. we paid Russia several times over for “their” module; the first payments were used to patch up Mir; subsequent payments went to corrupt Russian officials. Eventually, once everybody had lovely seaside summer mansions, the Russian module got built.
Had we maintained control of the station, we would have a much more functional station, because the entire structure would be built using the same standards for power, data, etc. As it is there are literally parts of Station that do not talk to each other, and utilize sneakernet to pass data. Why? Because the politicians in their infinite wisdom didn’t see fit to let NASA be in charge, and there was no one authority who could determine specs. So everybody built their modules to their own nationality’s specifications. Ever tried to plug an American hairdryer into a European power outlet? Yeah, that.
BinaryWatcher
…More, the original Station Freedom was intended to be an eventual way station for future lunar missions, including attempts to establish a base.
Nedward Marbletoe
Very interesting first-hand info.  Thx.
BinaryWatcher
YVW.
Nedward Marbletoe
Go Moon Base!  But ISS is cool, anything up there is cool.  Moon Base wouldn’t have the risk of falling out of the sky since the moon is actually orbiting further up each year.
Don Haywood
I thought the actual first words were “Tranquility base here.  The Eagle has landed.” The “Engine stopped” happened before the LEM artually touched down.
darryl
Those were the first broadcast words.  The first spoken words were from Buzz, he said something like “Contact light” Referring to the light on the control panel that lit up and told them one of the lander legs touched the ground.
-d
Don Haywood
I wonder, too, is some off the intercom/radio comments were made as well.  Like – F*** that was close.”
Plenum
Point 8: The dropped, “a” in “…that’s one small step for (a) man,…” was NOT due to a shoddy communications system!  The communication system was VOICE-ACTIVATED for the practical reason of saving battery power. — If you recall, the transmissions almost always started with a few hundredths of a seconds delay, with a lag-time. [The word “very” would sound like “airy”, for example, but we would understand it, of course, as “very”.]  He stated the first part of the sentence, which was with continuous voicing (thus no break, “+voicing characteristic” (mostly) for you phoneticians) then, with a break to say “a man”, BUT THE VOICE ACTIVATION SYSTEM SHUT OFF, and then he continued with “a man”, but the voice-activation delay unintentionally omitted the “a” in “…(a) man…”, but “man” was transmitted in its entirety because the transmission was activated by the missing “a”. — I heard the above in an interview with one of the crew members, years ago, I can’t remember which one – it may have been Armstrong – but it explains the lost word.  ((I teach English, and use this example in some advanced classes to point out unstressed/stressed words within the English phonological system.))  Thanks for reading…
Maria_Octo
Listening at the clip above, he did not pause long enough for the “a” to be dropped. He goofed is what he did.
Plenum
Well, I wasn’t halucinating when I saw the interview in which he explained very clearly what happened…. Hmm.  And I’ve spent some time today listening to various recordings to the famous moment, and they match the clip above.  And, then I located a writer who asked him about the famous moment and he mentions the controversy and not the voice-activated transmission system. Maybe the interview I saw was his technical excuse to avoid saying, “I goofed in one of the most important moments in the history of Mankind.” Anyway, you’re right, Maria, there doesn’t appear to be enough time to say, “a”… no break between.  He continues right through from “for” to “man”.
Polaris1
Aldrin’s “OK engine stop” was made when the contact light lit on the panel. The LM then fell the remaining three feet to the surface (a procedure discontinued in the later heavier LM’s). I would suggest that if you’re still moving towards something then you haven’t got there yet. The first words spoken on the moon would therefore have been Aldrin’s “ACA out of detent”. Sloppy research.
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Nedward Marbletoe
That’s what I heard him say on some interview, that he said it right.  Easy to believe the “a” could be hard to hear.  Any way it just made the quote more famous.  They were some righteous dudes.
Nedward Marbletoe
Best article evah!
The moon smells like wet ashes and gunpowder, and there’s $200 and 4 days of food stashed up there.  That might even be useful someday.
Shannon Varga
Next time I’m feeling hungry I’m going make my way upto the moon for some preserved food
Mikey Doesn’t Like It
The lengths you NoBama synchophants go to and stupidity you exhibit as you continue to delude yourself into believing that the vote you gave the organizer-in-chief wasn’t a massive mistake just beggars belief!  He has continued to prove the case I made since the day he first announced his candidacy.   He had no experience that in any way, shape or form qualified him for the office of the Presidency. Everything he has done or tried to do since has proved that over and over.  As the Brits love to say “He couldn’t organize a piss-up in a brewery.” Nixon was a crook but the Watergate break in, such a sensation when it occurred, pales in comparison to the litany of offenses this administratration has and continues to commit and the way they play fast and loose with the Constitution when it suits them to do so.  Why is it that you and others like you just turn a blind eye to the criminality and constantly try to point fingers in every other direction to take the spotlight away from the criminal in chief you elected like you have done right here?  I’m not saying that Romney would have been any better but at least he had the experience of being a Governor.  And one thing is for sure, he couldn’t have done any worse than the clown currently in the white house and the circus of fools supporting him in the legislature.
AKP
What happened to the comments left by “FACTS”?
Redhands
JFK beat Nixon, with votes of the dead in, Chicago.  That gave jfk Illinois & WH.  Nixon,  took US out of V.Nam, was the last Pres. were savings in bank beat inflation, was strongly against fracking because of fresh water & other environmental concerns.
Nixon, won his second election by a very large margin, but Hillary (not Clinton yet) “found” missing minuets on “WH tapes”.  Odd, Bill was working with McCarthy  election committee .  The tape was from a different machine then the WH one.
I will concede, I’m VERY disappointed of the slow progress of the US of A’s space program!
maias
Why doesn’t the flag have a shadow? The man’s shadow goes from left to right.
Wizzy
Can someone explain to me why Houston asks them questions and the astronauts respond within 1 second?
It would take at least 3 seconds for the transmission to get to the moon and then back to Earth, not counting the time it would take a human to respond to a question???﻿
Looking for a reasonable explanation.
doctor uziku