One Small Step

109:23:38 Armstrong: I'm at the foot of the ladder. The LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained, as you get close to it. It's almost like a powder. (The) ground mass is very fine. (Pause) [Just before Neil's next transmission, as a result of Buzz's changes to the 16-mm camera settings and Neil's position on the footpad, the film record shows the LEC attached to the front of Neil's suit. We can see reflections in the LMP's window of what appear to be parts of Buzz's suit as he changes the camera settings and monitors Neil's activities.]

109:24:13 Armstrong: I'm going to step off the LM now. (Long Pause) [Neil has his right hand on the ladder and will step down with his left foot. As he reaches down with his foot, the 16-mm film indicates that there isn't much slack in the LEC. (See a full discussion linked here. ) In the TV record, the LEC is just barely visible against the black sky.]

109:24:48 Armstrong: That's one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind. (Long Pause) [At the time of the mission, the world heard Neil say "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind". As Andrew Chaikin details in A Man on the Moon, after the mission, Neil said that he had intended to say 'one small step for a man' and believed that he had done so. However, he also agreed that the 'a' didn't seem to be audible in the recordings. The important point is that the world had no problem understanding his meaning. However, over the decades, people interested in details of the mission - including your editor - have listened repeatedly to the recordings, without hearing any convincing evidence of the 'a'. In 2006, with a great deal of attendant media attention, journalist/ entrepreneur Peter Shann Ford claimed to have located the 'a' in the waveform of Neil's transmission. Subsequently, more rigorous analyses of the transmission were undertaken by a number of people, including some with professional experience with audio waveforms and, most importantly, audio spectrograms. As of October 2006, none of these analyses support Ford's conclusion. The transcription used above honors Neil's intent.] [Readers interested in the exact timing of events in these transcripts should note that there are notable inconsistencies in the times given in the original NASA transcripts. I have not attempted to correct those times and simply note that a time of 109:24:48 is not consistent with times leading up to the moment. 109:24:26 would be consistent with what's gone before. Later in the mission, NASA tells the press that the first step came at 109:24:20. The Apollo 11 Mission report gives "initial contact" at 109:24:15. Clearly, over longer intervals, the transcript times are only suggestive. Discontinuous jumps like the one between 109:24:13 and 109:24:48 occur at notable mission events and elsewhere, probably at the end of tapes or tape segments used by individual transcribers. For the purposes of this Journal, precise times seem unnecessary.]

109:25:08 Armstrong: Yes, the surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• space
• armstrong
• nasa
• apollo
• 11
• lunar

[Jorge7171CP]

Yep! It's the same in EVERY VIDEO! You hit it man! Nice vid

[ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP676]

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