Neil Armstrong, an American astronaut, became the first man to walk on the moon 45 years ago today. Five years ago, when we celebrated the 40th anniversary of what is probably the greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century, we looked at a linguistic challenge to the astronaut’s words from the moon’s surface.
Neil Armstrong’s famous first words from the surface of the moon almost 40 years ago have been quoted and put on people’s walls ever since that historic day when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. A new linguistic analysis of the transmission, being presented at a conference in England, suggests that he did not say exactly what he meant to say.
The transmission back to Earth said, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Linguists have pointed out that “man” means essentially the same thing in this context as “mankind.” That is, both imply all of humanity.
But studying the voice inflections, the British Broadcasting Corporation reports, linguists have drawn the conclusion that Neil Armstrong meant to say “one small step for a man…” He didn’t, because there was no room for the word “a” in between “for” and “man,” but the contrasting inflections in his voice show that he clearly meant to oppose the two words “man” and “mankind.”
Buzz Aldrin followed Neil Armstrong down the ladder to become the second person to walk on the surface of the moon.
In the Washington Post last week, Mr Aldrin shared some insights about that day and looked forward to meeting the challenge of a manned trip, a one-way mission, so to speak, to Mars.
The paper quoted his longtime friend, aerospace executive Norm Augustine, asking Mr Aldrin while he was testifying about such a mission on Capitol Hill, “Who would ever want to do that?”
To which the astronaut responded: “Did you ever hear of the Pilgrims?”
So whether it’s a mission for one man or one country, or an objective for all of humanity, Mr Aldrin said he hopes President Obama’s successor will use the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing to call on NASA to get back on track and try to send people to Mars, perhaps to stay there.