(Image credit: NASA)
Were Neil Armstrong’s historic first words spoken on the moon pre-scripted or, as the late astronaut long held, ad-libbed on the spot?
Armstrong, on becoming the first person to set foot onto another planetary body on July 20, 1969, radioed back to Earth, «That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.» His quote instantly became a part of history. (The «a» wasn’t audible in the broadcast but the astronaut said — and a 2006 audio analysis supported — that he did indeed speak the word.)
Since returning to Earth four decades ago and up until his death last year, Armstrong maintained that he did not give any thought to what he would say while on the moon until after he safely landed the Apollo 11 lunar module «Eagle» at Tranquility Base.
But a new interview with his brother suggests Armstrong’s «small step» quote was not a «giant leap» at improvisation. [Neil Armstrong Buried at Sea (NASA Photos)]
«He slipped me a piece of paper and said ‘read that,'» said Dean Armstrong, Neil’s younger brother, during a new BBC documentary on the first moonwalker’s life that first aired on Sunday (Dec. 30). «On that piece of paper there was ‘That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.'»
Neil then asked his brother what he thought about the quote. «Fabulous,» Dean recalled as saying, to which his brother replied, ‘I thought you might like that, but I wanted you to read it.'»
According to Dean, that conversation took place months before his brother launched to the moon. But not everyone accepts his account as being accurate.
«As much as I respect Dean Armstrong, I do not believe his recollection of this is correct,» James R. Hansen, Neil Armstrong‘s authorized biographer, wrote on Facebook.
Neil Armstrong ‘never told lies’
«I spent a great deal of time talking about this issue during my near-60 hours of interviews for my biography of him, ‘First Man,'» Hansen said, describing his research into the origin of the «one small step» quote. «Neil was the sort of man who never told lies. He might avoid or evade certain questions and answers, but he never outright lied.»
In «First Man: A Life of Neil A. Armstrong» (2005, Simon and Schuster), Armstrong told Hansen that he came up with the quote as he completed the post-landing checklist and prepared for humanity’s first moonwalk.
«Once on the surface and realizing that the moment was at hand, fortunately I had some hours to think about it after getting there,» Armstrong said.
«It just sort of evolved during the period that I was doing the procedures of the practice takeoff and the EVA prep and all the other activities that were on our flight schedule at the time,» Armstrong told Hansen. «I didn’t think it was particularly important, but other people obviously did.» [Photos: Neil Armstrong Remembered]
Armstrong recounted the same course of events in other interviews and during public lectures held before and after the research for his biography. To Hansen, the astronaut’s own words leave no room for debate.
«He told me quite specifically and emphatically that he did not pre-plan what he would say and came up with the phrase only after the landing,» Hansen wrote on Facebook. «That was what he told me clearly and on tape.»
As further evidence, «First Man» also quotes Armstrong’s first wife Janet as having had «absolutely no idea what her husband would say when he stepped onto the moon.»
Nor, apparently, did his crewmates.
«On the way to the moon, Mike [Collins] and I had asked Neil what he was going to say when he stepped out on the moon,» astronaut Buzz Aldrin told Hansen. «He had replied that he was still thinking it over.»
Hansen interviewed Dean Armstrong for «First Man» as well, but Neil’s brother did not say anything then about his knowing the quote ahead of time.
«I think we should accept [what Neil said] as true and not a story his brother never has told for 43 years and did not mention to me during my long interview for the book,» said Hansen. «Why wouldn’t he have told that story for his brother’s authorized biography?»
‘The Hobbit’ and other hypotheses
Dean Armstrong is not the first to suggest his brother gave more than a passing thought to his first words on the moon.
As Hansen recounts in «First Man,» some have attributed the idea for the quote to the moonwalker’s apparent affinity for J.R.R. Tolkien’s works of fiction. After leaving NASA in 1971, Armstrong named his farm for a valley described in «The Lord of the Rings» and chose an email address with a Tolkien theme.
According to the theory, Armstrong’s historic quote can be traced to «The Hobbit,» to a scene where the protagonist Bilbo Baggins jumps over the villainous Gollum in a leap that Tolkien described as «not a great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark.»
«Regrettably for Tolkien fans,» explained Hansen in «First Man,» «Armstrong’s reading of the classic books could not have influenced what he said when he stepped on the lunar surface in 1969. Indeed, he did come to read ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ but not until well after Apollo 11.»
Another hypothesis suggests Armstrong took inspiration from a memo circulating around NASA. Written by Willis Shapely, an associate deputy administrator at the space agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., the memo suggested that the lunar landing should be symbolized «as an historic step forward for all mankind.»
The problem, Hansen writes, is Armstrong had no memory of ever seeing the memo, let alone it «planting the seed» for his historic first words.
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Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE.com, an online publication and community devoted to space history with a particular focus on how and where space exploration intersects with pop culture. Pearlman is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of «Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He previously developed online content for the National Space Society and Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, helped establish the space tourism company Space Adventures and currently serves on the History Committee of the American Astronautical Society, the advisory committee for The Mars Generation and leadership board of For All Moonkind. In 2009, he was inducted into the U.S. Space Camp Hall of Fame in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2021, he was honored by the American Astronautical Society with the Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History.
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Astronaut Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) is widely regarded as an American hero. His bravery and skill earned him the honor of being the first human to set foot on the moon in 1969. For the remainder of his life, he was sought after for his views on the human condition, technology, space exploration, and more.
Armstrong was never interested in being too much in the public eye after he made history with NASA, although he was a spokesman for several American companies. He also served on corporate boards and worked on the commission that investigated the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster, among other things. Today, his words still resonate years after his death.
‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’
Armstrong’s most famous quote doesn’t quite make sense since «man» and «mankind» have the same meaning. He meant to say «… one small step for a man…» referring to his first footstep on the moon having deep implications for all people. The astronaut hoped that the annals of history would remember his words for what he meant to say during Apollo 11’s lunar landing. Upon listening to the tape, he noted there wasn’t much time for him to say all the words he’d planned.
‘Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed’
On the night in 1969 when the spacecraft piloted by Armstrong settled down onto the surface of the moon, millions of people around the world were listening via radio or watching on TV. The landing sequence was risky, and as each milestone was reached, Armstrong or colleague Buzz Aldrin would announce it. When they finally landed, Armstrong let the world know that they’d made it.
The simple statement was a huge relief to the people at Mission Control, who knew he had only a few seconds of fuel left to complete the landing. Luckily, the landing area was relatively safe, and as soon as he saw a smooth patch of lunar ground, he landed his craft.
‘I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats’
The full quote is «I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats and I don’t intend to waste any of mine.» Some report that the phrase ended with «running around doing exercises,» though it’s unclear whether he actually said that. Armstrong was known to be very straightforward in his commentary.
‘We came in peace for all mankind’
In an expression of humanity’s higher moral hope, Armstrong stated, «Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind.» He was reading aloud the inscription on a plaque attached to the Apollo 11 lunar module, which remains on the surface of the Moon. In the future, when people live and work on the Moon, it will be a sort of «museum» exhibit commemorating the first men to walk on the lunar surface.
‘I put up my thumb and it blotted out the Earth’
We can only imagine what it’s like to stand on the moon and look at the distant Earth. People become accustomed to our view of the heavens, but to turn and see the Earth in all its blue glory is a sight only a few have been privileged to enjoy. This idea came to a head when Armstrong found that he could hold up his thumb and completely block the view of Earth.
He often spoke of how lonely it felt and how beautiful our home is. In the future, it’s likely that people from around the globe will be able to live and work on the moon, sending back their own images and thoughts about what it’s like to see our home planet from the dusty lunar surface.
‘We’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being’
«I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. We’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.»
Armstrong was a strong believer in the exploration of space, and his mission experience was a tribute to his hard work and faith that the space program was something America was destined to pursue. When he made this statement he was affirming that going to space was just another step for humanity.
‘I was elated, ecstatic, and extremely surprised that we were successful’
The complexity of traveling to the moon is immense, even by today’s standards. Modern spacecraft with newer safety standards and generations of expertise behind them will soon be heading back to the moon. But in the early days of the Space Age, everything was new and relatively untested.
Remember that the computing power available to the Apollo landing module was less than what’s in today’s scientific calculators. The technology in cell phones puts it to shame. In that context, it’s amazing that the moon landings were a success. Armstrong had at his disposal the best technology of the time, which to our eyes looks rather old-fashioned. But it was enough to get him to the moon and back, a fact he never forgot.
‘It’s a brilliant surface in that sunlight’
Part of Apollo astronauts’ training was to learn about the geology of the lunar surface and be able to communicate it back to Earth as they were exploring it. In that context, Armstrong was giving a good science report from the field.
«It’s a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on Earth. It’s an interesting place to be. I recommend it.» Armstrong tried to explain this amazing place that very few people have ever visited the best way he could. Other astronauts who walked on the moon explained it in much the same way. Aldrin termed the moon’s surface «magnificent desolation.»
‘Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand’
«Humans have an inquisitive nature, and that manifests itself in our desire to take that next step, to seek out the next great adventure.» Going to the moon wasn’t really a question in Armstrong’s mind; it was simply the next step in the evolution of our knowledge. For him and for all of us, going there was necessary to explore the limits of our technology and set the stage for what mankind could achieve in the future.
‘I fully expected that…we would have achieved substantially more’
«I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.» Armstrong was commenting on his missions and the history of exploration since then. Apollo 11 was looked upon at the time as a starting point. It proved that people could achieve what many considered impossible, and NASA set its sights on greatness.
Everyone fully expected that humans would soon be off to Mars. The colonization of the moon was a near certainty, probably by the end of the century. Decades later, however, the moon and Mars are still being robotically explored, and plans for human exploration of those worlds are still being worked out.
At 10:56 p.m. ET on July 20, 1969, the American astronaut Neil Armstrong put his left foot on the lunar surface and famously declared, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
In the 50 years since then, many have been eager to hear more about what prompted him to choose those words to be the first spoken on the moon.
Was Neil Armstrong inspired by The Hobbit?
According to Armstrong biographer James R. Hansen — author of First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, which inspired the 2018 film First Man — some think Neil Armstrong’s famous quote is a riff on a line from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, in which the author describes protagonist Bilbo Baggins becoming invisible and jumping over the villain Gollum, “not a great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark.” And there is, in fact, an Armstrong-Tolkien connection. After leaving NASA, Armstrong and his family moved to a farm in Lebanon, Ohio, that he dubbed Rivendell, which is also the name of a valley and the home of the half-elf, half-human Elrond, in Lord of the Rings. Armstrong also had Tolkien-themed email address in the ’90s.
However, when Hansen asked Armstrong to set the record straight on that theory, the Apollo 11 astronaut said he didn’t read Tolkien’s books until after the Apollo 11 mission.
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Was the famous quote taken from a NASA memo?
Others have said Armstrong may have been influenced by a April 19, 1969, memo he had seen from Willis Shapley, an associate deputy administrator at NASA headquarters. “The intended overall impression of the symbolic activities and of the manner in which they are presented to the world should be to signalize [sic] the first lunar landing as an historic step forward for all mankind that has been accomplished by the United States of America,” he wrote. “[The] ‘forward step for all mankind’ aspect of the landing should be symbolized primarily by a suitable inscription to be left on the Moon and by statements made on Earth, and also perhaps by leaving on the Moon miniature flags of all nations.”
Armstrong, however, claimed he had no recollection of the memo.
The astronaut told Hansen the line had no complicated origin story, and simply came to him in the lead-up to the historic moment: “What can you say when you step off of something? Well, something about a step. It just sort of evolved during the period that I was doing the procedures of the practice takeoff and the EVA [extravehicular activity] prep and all the other activities that were on our flight schedule at that time.”
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A screenshot from video footage of Commander Neil Armstrong climbing down the ladder of the Lunar Module (LM) the ‘Eagle,’ to become the first man to set foot on the Moon on July 20, 1969, during NASA’s Apollo 11 lunar landing mission.
Space Frontiers—Getty Images
Was Neil Armstrong misquoted?
Grammarians have also pondered the matter of “the missing ‘a’”: In the audio from the moon, Armstrong sounds as if he’s saying “one small step for man,” and that’s the wording that appeared in contemporary reports on the moment. But wouldn’t it make more sense for him to have said “one small step for a man”? That extra article would improve the sentence’s grammar, highlighting the contrast between the single individual and the entirety of humankind, and Armstrong has said that he meant to say it that way in the first place.
After analyzing the audio file more closely, some experts have come to believe he did in fact say that syllable and has been misquoted in the 50 years since.
In 2006, a computer programmer Peter Shann Ford said he detected the missing “a” after putting the audio into a software that disabled people use to communicate using nerve impulses — research that Armstrong in a statement called “persuasive” backing for the idea that he did not misspeak. A 2013 study provided further support for the idea that Armstrong meant to say “a man” even if listeners on earth didn’t hear it that way. A year after Armstrong died on Aug. 25, 2012, at the age of 82, researchers from Ohio State University and Michigan State University analyzed the speaking patterns of central Ohioans like Armstrong, who hailed from Wapakoneta, and found that they tend to leave out words like “for” and “a.”
Even Armstrong’s younger brother Dean claimed Neil said “one small step for a man,” stating in a 2012 BBC documentary that, months before the historic flight, while playing the board game Risk, Neil passed him a piece of paper with the now famous line written down. “He says, ‘What do you think about that?’ I said, ‘Fabulous,’” Dean recalled. “He said, ‘I thought you might like that, but I wanted you to read it.’” (Hansen, however, has said Dean never told him that story in more than four decades of knowing him.)
In Hansen’s biography, Armstrong asked people to cut him some slack about the grammar.
“I can’t recapture it. For people who have listened to me for hours on the radio communications tapes, they know I left a lot of syllables out. It was not unusual for me to do that. I’m not particularly articulate. Perhaps it was a suppressed sound that didn’t get picked up by the voice mic. As I have listened to it, it doesn’t sound like there was time there for the word to be there…[C]ertainly the ‘a’ was intended, because that’s the only way the statement makes any sense. So I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it wasn’t said — although it actually might have been.”
Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com.
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We would like to give special thanks to all those Americans who built the spacecraft; who did the construction, design, the tests, and put their hearts and all their abilities into those craft. To those people tonight, we give a special thank you, and to all the other people that are listening and watching tonight, God bless you. Good night from Apollo 11.
Excerpts from Apollo Expeditions to the Moon, edited by Edgar M. Cortright, NASA SP-350, Washington, DC, amview.japan.usembassy.gov. 1975.
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Neil Armstrong
- Born: August 5, 1930
- Died: August 25, 2012
- Occupation: Astronaut
- Cite this Page: Citation
I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.
-Apollo mission press conference (1969)
Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
-First words from the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle after guiding the craft to a landing on the moon at 4:17pm EDT (20 July 1969)
That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.
-transcript of Apollo 11 moon landing
I’m quite certain that we’ll have such [lunar] bases in our lifetime, somewhat like the Antarctic stations and similar scientific outposts, continually manned.
-BBC interview (1970)
Through books you will meet poets and novelists whose creations will fire your imagination. You will meet the great thinkers who will share with you their philosophies, their concepts of the world, of humanity and of creation. You will learn about events that have shaped our history, of deeds both noble and ignoble. All of this knowledge is yours for the taking… Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it well.
-Letter to the children of Troy, Michigan on the opening of its Public Library (1971)
I am comfortable with my level of public discourse.
-Declining to be interviewed for a magazine article
The exciting part for me, as a pilot, was the landing on the moon. That was the time that we had achieved the national goal of putting Americans on the moon. The landing approach was, by far, the most difficult and challenging part of the flight. Walking on the lunar surface was very interesting, but it was something we looked on as reasonably safe and predictable. So the feeling of elation accompanied the landing rather than the walking.
-Interview at The New Space Race (August 2007)
…today’s cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems.
-On the differences between the present and the time of the space race which existed during the Cold War years, in an interview at The New Space Race (August 2007)
Pilots take no special joy in walking: pilots like flying. Pilots generally take pride in a good landing, not in getting out of the vehicle.
-On his famous moonwalk
I’ll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, but nevertheless, it was a diversion.
-Apollo 11 40th anniversary celebration (2009)