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Monday, September 28, 2009

History A Speech by Safire that Nixon Didn't Have to Give

Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 9:48 AM

Here's the beginning of an "In Event of Moon Disaster" speech imagining Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin dying on the moon:

Awesome work, Gawker.

Comments (13) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Wow, it really is an an amazing speech.

Posted by anthony990

on September 28, 2009 at 9:53 AM

Wait, but Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin weren't the only two crew members. What if other people had died, too?

Posted by care bear on September 28, 2009 at 10:00 AM

What "Awesome work" did Gawker do here? The speech has been available for a long time.

Related: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/12/opinio…

Posted by stinkbug on September 28, 2009 at 10:12 AM

@2 - Then the world would have plummeted into chaos as President Nixon, too dumbfounded to say anything, just stared into the camera, unable to ad-lib the name "Michael Collins".

Posted by Mahtli69 on September 28, 2009 at 10:26 AM

With the 20/20 vision of hindsight, the lunar landing seems like a foregone conclusion. We learn in school that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first people on the moon, period, and then the Vietnam War ended in 1974 and then Ronald Reagan got elected and then.... This speech really pulls into sharp focus the bravery of those two and the audacity of the endeavor as a whole.

Posted by TVDinner

on September 28, 2009 at 10:29 AM

Beautiful. Thank the maker he didn't need to read it.

Posted by Rotten666 on September 28, 2009 at 10:36 AM

@5, way back in the era of teletype terminals and remote mainframe computers, we played a lunar-gravity-simulation game called LEM where you had to trigger short engine blasts to slow your descent to the moon's surface and land gently enough to prevent damage, without running out of fuel. Though that was some years after the first real lunar landing, it helped convince me of the near-miraculous nature of the whole moon effort. I never could understand how that whole ungainly contraption could stay upright for landing, or the ridiculous dented-golf-ball top half separate and ascend to rendezvous with the command module.

Posted by rob!

on September 28, 2009 at 10:49 AM

@2, Armstrong and Aldrin were the ones in the lander module, and presumably the thought was that Collins could still manage to get back from lunar orbit. Armstrong nearly used up their fuel trying to land, and the entire landing was the part no one had ever done before.

@3, true, this speech did make the rounds during the recent 40th anniversary of the landing...

Posted by Peter F on September 28, 2009 at 10:50 AM

Is anyone else old enough to hear Nixon's voice reading this in their heads? It sounds just like him. Creep-o.

Posted by Fnarf

on September 28, 2009 at 11:32 AM

@9. I thought it was Nixon's voice but it was just an old David Frye performance.

Posted by Scholar of violence on September 28, 2009 at 12:47 PM

No, I hear Nixon's voice too - unfortunately, I sometimes still hear it even when I'm not reading an old speech of his.

Posted by COMTE

on September 28, 2009 at 1:29 PM

I second @3. This has been going around the blogs today as if it were some awesome brand new piece of journalistic archaeology, which it isn't.

That said, it gives me chills to read it, followed by nausea at the idea that it'd be Nixon's voice reading it. It was bad enough to have to listen to Dubya at the Columbia memorial ceremony, and Reagan at the Challenger ceremony.

Posted by tim on September 28, 2009 at 2:18 PM

9,yes! 10, oh wait, you're right!

And 11, yeah, I was just imitating him in my kitchen the other day. Pretty much the David Frye voice.

"Pray with me, Henry!"

Posted by CP on September 28, 2009 at 7:05 PM