Silly Little Country

I Really Wish he Had said It

That night remains one of the great memories of my life; it is likely hard for younger people to recall how implausible the success of the moon landing was, given the prior rate of launch vehicles blowing up - well, no wait, maybe it is easy, given the rate of Shuttle disasters in the last 20-odd years.
In any case, the moon launding was a great night - I watched it with a later Nobel Prize winner in my family's home, and I recall groaning when Armstrong left out the critical article, turning what would have been a brilliant epithet into a small disaster, and creating years of analysis.
Recent news reports have popped this back up into the news. The good news is the folk at Language Log have been subjecting the new reports that Armstrong really did say 'a' to a fair degree of scrutiny - we have this, and this, and this.
I have mentioned that what I love in the blogging world is the obsessional nature - saves me a lot of work.
What do I think? Well, Armstrong, whatever these analyses show, clearly fumbled the prepared quotation, and it is a bit tragic. I still think the theatre would have been far better had he hit that note correctly.
On the other hand - what do I think of manned space travel? Another topic, but those robots are sure producing results out there.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 9:28 PM