Friday, Oct. 6, 2006Good Grammar on the Moon

I may be the last to weigh in on this story, but at least I'm the most skeptical. Last week, the Houston Chronicle reported on a new analysis of Neil Armstrong's first words as he became the first human to step onto the moon. What Armstrong insists he said was "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." But if you listen to the tape, the first "a" isn't there: it goes "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

Unfortunately, this renders the sentence pretty much meaningless, since "man" and "mankind" mean the same thing in this context. Armstrong and NASA have always argued that history books should report what he meant, not what he said--which is more than a little Orwellian. Of course, any or all of the great utterances reported in history books might be entirely made up. Maybe Caesar didn't say "Et tu, Brute." Maybe he said "Damn, that hurts a whole lot." We don't have an actual recording, so we have to go with what might be completely apocryphal.

We do have Armstrong's recording. But according to the Chronicle, a computer programmer from Australia has found the missing "a" on it. Using a program that helps the handicapped use nerve impulses to activate a computerized voice, Peter Shann Ford claims he's shown that it's there on the tape, but only lasts 35 milliseconds, ten times too fast to be audible. Armstrong's comment, as reported by the Chronicle: "'I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford's analysis of it and I find the technology interesting and useful,' Armstrong said in a statement. 'I also find his conclusion persuasive. Persuasive is the appropriate word."

It sure is. Armstrong has been persuaded that the thing he's claimed for 40 years to be true is true. Think that took a lot of persuading? I don't, really. I also don't quite see how a person can speak a word ten times too fast for it to be audible. And I especially don't see how you can extract that information from a tape as scratchy as this one was. Don't take my word for it: listen.

Nobody seems to have asked Mr. Ford these questions. Nor did anyone, evidently, question why he wrote up his findings "in the format of a scientific paper" rather than writing an actual scientific paper and submitting it to an actual scientific journal, where it could be critiqued by actual scientists. But that's probably because this was a NASA-sponsored event. The agency is even better at spin than it is at space exploration, and this is a great example.

—M.L.