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In July 1969, the world watched as the crew of Apollo 11 successfully entered lunar orbit, landed, then blasted off and returned to Earth. At each step of the way there were dangers and NASA had backup plans in case something went terribly wrong — though there wasn’t much NASA could do from 384,403 kilometers away.
I recently came across a 1999 essay by William Safire, published in The New York Times — thanks again for opening those archives, Times — discussing the speech Safire wrote just in case the mission failed.
The most dangerous part of the trip was not landing the little module on the moon, but in launching it back up to the mother ship. If that failed, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin could not be rescued. Mission Control would have to “close down communications” and, as the world agonized, let the doomed astronauts starve to death or commit suicide.
Nixon aides H. R. Haldeman and Peter Flanigan told me to plan for that tragic contingency. On July 18, 1969, I recommended that “in event of moon disaster . . . the President should telephone each of the widows-to-be” and after NASA cut off contact “a clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to ‘the deepest of the deep,’ concluding with the Lord’s Prayer.” A draft Presidential speech was included.
Read more, including the text of the speech, in Safire’s piece Disaster Never Came. There’s also a Wikipedia page with links to external information, including a scan of the original memo.
(Via Kottke.org.)
Comments (5)
Comment
This reminds me of Operation Dirty Trick, which you can look up on wickipedia. It has to do with blaming a possible failure of the 1962 Mercury mission and the subsequent death of John Glenn on Cuba to insight a war.
posted by josh on 10-29-2007 at 2:09 pm
Reading that article gave me cold chills. “Mission Control would have to ”close down communications” and, as the world agonized, let the doomed astronauts starve to death or commit suicide.” They’d have to cut off the communications, I suppose, so that the public wouldn’t be freaked out by the astronaut’s panicked pleas for help that couldn’t be given to them, or the sounds of their suffering. Gadzooks, what a ghastly fate!
posted by bibli0phile on 10-29-2007 at 2:51 pm
This is testimony to the bravery of the Astronauts.
They knew that this scenario was entirely possible before they volunteered.
posted by Willis on 10-31-2007 at 10:01 am
What a load of tripe. Anyone who thinks we went to the moon FORTY YEARS AGO but haven’t been back since to build a station there AND the pres. says it’ll be 12-15 years before we can go back again is surely severely mentally challenged. Only people in the US think the moon was visited by astronauts. They probably also think an airliner can crash into a building leaving only a 17 foot hole and NO debris. Ha, ha,ha,ha,ha. No one else is so stupid and blindly patriotic.
posted by John P on 11-2-2007 at 11:14 am
What’s not clear here? Oh, sorry, nothing is. The fact is that until man goes [back] to the moon, we will never know if this was a hoax or not. My money is on the Chinese getting there first/next.
posted by What is NASA? on 11-29-2007 at 10:58 am