The Missing Moon Rocks

March 20, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The fortieth anniversary last year of the first moon landing by Apollo 11 stirred interest in the mineral artifacts brought back by that mission and the five others that reached the lunar surface. President Nixon, in the months after Apollo 11’s return, sent a number of moon rocks to governments abroad and gave a rock to each of the fifty states. After Apollo 17, the last mission, returned to Earth in December 1972, he arranged for moon rocks to be sent to the heads of state of 135 countries. At the time, no one knew that the rocks brought back would be the last ones to date.

Nearly 40 years later, it turns out that of the 135 rocks sent abroad, the whereabouts of only 25 can now be confirmed. Some of the others were stolen; others were lost by their recipients or by their descendants; and some simply vanished in political turmoil. (In other words, some may turn up on Ebay.)

To cite two such examples, General Francisco Franco of Spain received a moon rock; nowadays his granddaughter reports that her mother somehow misplaced it. And the moon rock sent to Afghanistan was stolen from the country’s national museum when it was looted in 1996, in the chaos between the withdrawal of Soviet forces and the savage rise of the Taliban.

In this country, the moon rocks have been more securely kept. But, as a graduate student tells us in this column from the Nashville Tennessean, while Georgia proudly displays its rock in a museum, the one in Tennessee has been the object of many theft attempts and so is hidden away under lock and key.

Nixon, The British, And The Moon

August 11, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth, Richard Nixon, Science | Leave a Comment 

Over at the UK version of Wired Magazine, Katie Scott ruminates about the British space program and poses the question: why didn’t Britain win the race to the Moon?

According to Scott, the British instead focused on satellite technology, a development that — according to folklore — RN gave due deference to:

When Sputnik shocked the US into a space race with the Soviet Union, British scientists were soon working alongside the Americans. In 1962, a US Thor-Delta rocket launched Ariel 1 (also known as UK-1), the first spacecraft to contain UK technology and the world’s first international satellite. “Ariel 1 was built by Nasa, but contained seven scientific experiments devised and constructed by UK universities and industry,” Millard says. This was the first of five Ariel satellites.

As work on satellites continued, Britain surprised partners by withdrawing from efforts to build a European spacecraft in June 1966, blaming spiralling costs. This move, says Millard “signalled the UK’s exit from any further substantive development of space launch vehicles”.

Even so, British scientists continued to play a key role in the development of satellites. The US offered massive opportunities for advanced minds, and scientists from the UK were among those who joined Nasa and became integral to its success. Francis Thomas Bacon, for example, developed the fuel cells used on Apollo 11, and was later lauded by Richard Nixon. According to space lore, the President put his arm around the Englishman’s shoulders and told him: “Without you, Tom, we wouldn’t have gotten to the Moon.”

Two Anniversaries

August 8, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Apollo XI XLth, Healthcare, News media, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Senate, U.S. History, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

Last month the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, and of Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin’s historic moonwalk, was the subject of many hours of TV coverage and commentary, and of innumerable column-inches of articles and op-eds in what remains of American newsmagazines and the daily press – not to mention what was written and pictured online.  Next weekend, when Woodstock turns 40, we’ll undoubtedly see an almost equal amount of coverage. 

Back in 1969, these two events were seen by some to represent opposite, perhaps irreconcilable sides of the nation; it may be that for every mud-soaked hippie and teenager in Woodstock who was willing to grant that walking on the moon was “far out,” there were two that would have complained about all the “bread” spent on getting the astronauts to the lunar surface when there were, “like,” so many things wrong with the inner cities, and the environment that needed fixing.  (“Tricia, Tell Your Daddy,” co-written in 1969 by former Phil Spector collaborator Jeff Barry and Jay And The Americans’s Marty Sanders, and recorded by the latter’s band as well as bubblegum singer Andy Kim, presents these sentiments in musical form.)  But today, Woodstock and Apollo tend to be seen in the nostalgic mist of memory and idealism, two sides of the same cherished coin. 

Two other, less happy anniversaries have gone more or less unnoticed.  The Media Research Center’s website pointed out last month that on July 21, 1969, and in the succeeding days before and after Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins splashed down, coverage of the Apollo mission had to jostle for attention with the news coming out of Massachusetts, after it was revealed that Sen. Edward Kennedy, on the night of July 18, had driven off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island adjoining Martha’s Vineyard, and that while he had survived the accident, his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, had not.

What happened that night – and in the following days, as Sen. Kennedy tried to explain what had happened -  ended the senator’s hopes for the Presidency, as became clear when he unsuccessfully challenged President Carter in 1980.  But two generations now have no memory of Chappaquiddick, and, in any event, with Sen. Kennedy now gravely ill, it’s understandable that last month the anniversary of this tragedy passed with little comment. (Indeed, I only glancingly thought about Chappaquiddick in late July, and I have more reason to recall it than most: on July 25, 1969, I sat with Sen. Edmund Muskie in a hotel room in New Albany, Indiana, while he watched Kennedy give his televised speech about what had happened – a speech that, at that instant, made Muskie the Democratic front-runner in the 1972 race.)

As the Media Research Center article notes, the anniversary went unnoticed on the evening network newscasts;  Bill Maher unexpectedly brought it up to his startled panelists on his HBO show Real Time, but other than that it went unmentioned on the air.  Ken Rudin devoted a post to Chappaquiddick at his political blog at NPR’s site on July 21 and was deluged with angry comments. Jeff Simon, the arts editor of the Buffalo News, was the only columnist in a daily newspaper to write about the anniversary, and Jon Meacham, Newsweek’s editor, spoke about it in his column in the magazine’s July 27 issue, which was mainly devoted to a long article by Kennedy about the need for comprehensive health-care legislation. 

To turn to another event, which happened thirty-five years ago this weekend: as recently as 2004, the anniversary of President Nixon’s resignation was the subject of  a fair number of articles and op-eds every five years.  But in 2007, the Watergate break-in’s 35th received much less notice than before.  Most likely this not only had to do with the passage of time, but with the fact that Vanity Fair’s unveiling of W. Mark Felt as “Deep Throat” in 2005 removed the mystery that was the linchpin for much of what was written about Watergate in the previous quarter-century.

And such has been the case with this year’s anniversary of RN’s resignation. So far I’ve spotted three items of much significance. One is a column by Matt Lewis in Politics Daily which also reproduces RN’s August 9 remarks in the East Room in toto.  Another is a column by onetime Nixon White House speechwriter Ben Stein in the American Spectator, in which he reminisces, once more, about being present for those remarks, and notes that the resignation had the effect of introducing the first major note of uncertainty in his own life.  The third is an interview with Nixon’s chief of staff at the time of the resignation, Gen. Alexander M. Haig, in the Palm Beach Post.  There, Gen. Haig remarks:

“Watergate was misunderstood because people didn’t realize they had a very visionary president in Richard Nixon,” Haig said. “The only thing that kept him from office, which was his own fault probably and he’d be the first to admit it, is that he wasn’t lovable. That’s because he was preoccupied with the consequences of his acts, and he always took action only after very careful and systematic analysis.”

Haig said it was Nixon, not Ronald Reagan, who should be credited for ending the Cold War.

“He opened the door to China and that won the Cold War without a shot being fired,” Haig said. “People never understood what going to China meant.”

7.24.69

July 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth, Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

 

Watchful waiting: RN aboard the USS Hornet in mid-Pacific waiting for the Apollo XI command module splashdown.

24 July 1969: Day 9 of Apollo XI’s Mission to the Moon

6:47 a.m.- Crew awakens and begins to prepare for splashdown. 12:21 p.m.- Command and service modules are separated. 12:35 p.m.- Command module re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere. 12:51 p.m.- Spacecraft splashes down 825 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu and about 13 nautical miles from the recovery ship, the U.S.S. Hornet. 1:20 p.m.- Hatch of command module opens and frogman hands in isolation suits. 1:28 p.m.- Astronauts emerge from the spacecraft in isolation suits and are sprayed with a disinfectant as a guard against the possibility of their contaminating the Earth with Moon "germs." 1:57 p.m.- Astronauts arrive by helicopter on the flight deck of the Hornet. Still inside the helicopter they ride an elevator to hangar deck and then walk immediately into the mobile quarantine trailer in which they will remain until they arrive at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Houston early July 27. 3:00 p.m.- President Nixon welcomes the astronauts, visible through a window of the trailer. Speaking over an intercom, he greets them, extends them an invitation to attend a dinner with him August 13. and tells them: "This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation…. As a result of what you have done, the world’s never been closer together …. We can reach for the stars just as you have reached so far for the stars."

Columbia has landed: Having traveled 952,700 nautical miles since 16 July, the Apollo XI command module splashes down in the distance as RN and NASA Administrator Dr. Thomas Paine watch from the USS Hornet.

 

 

RN’s Welcome Home and Chat With Apollo XI Astronauts

Neil, Buzz, and Mike: I want you to know that I think I am the luckiest man in the world, and I say this not only because I have the honor to be President of the United States, but particularly because I have the privilege of speaking for so many in welcoming you back to earth. I can tell you about all the messages we have received in Washington. Over 100 foreign governments, emperors, presidents, prime ministers, and kings, have sent the most warm messages that we have ever received. They represent over 2 billion people on this earth, all of them who have had the opportunity, through television, to see what you have done. Then I also bring you messages from members of the Cabinet and Members of the Senate, Members of the House, the space agency, from the streets of San Francisco where people stopped me a few days ago, and you all love that city, I know, as I do. But most important, I had a telephone call yesterday. The toll wasn’t, incidentally, as great as the one I made to you fellows on the moon. I made that collect, incidentally, in case you didn’t know. But I called three, in my view, three of the greatest ladies and most courageous ladies in the whole world today–your wives. From Jan, Joan, and Pat, I bring their love and their congratulations. We think it is just wonderful that they have participated at least in television in this return. We are only sorry they couldn’t be here. Also, I will let you in on a little secret. I made a date with them. I invited them to dinner on the 13th of August, right after you come out of quarantine. It will be a state dinner held in Los Angeles. The Governors of all the 50 States will be there, the Ambassadors, others from around the world and in America. They told me that you would come, too. All I want to know is: Will you come? We want to honor you then. MR. NEIL A. ARMSTRONG. We will do anything you say, Mr. President, anytime. THE PRESIDENT. One question, I think all of us would like to ask: As we saw you bouncing around in that float out there, I wonder if that wasn’t the hardest part of the journey. Did any of you get seasick? MR. ARMSTRONG. No, we didn’t, and it was one of the hardest parts, but it was one of the most pleasant, we can assure you. THE PRESIDENT. Well, I just know that you can sense what we all sense. When you get back now incidentally, have you been able to follow some of the things that happened since you have been gone? Did you know about the All-Star Game? COL. EDWIN E. ALDRIN, JR. Yes, sir. The capsule communicators have been giving us daily reports. THE PRESIDENT. Were you American League or National League? Col. ALDRIN. National League. MR. ARMSTRONG. Neither one. THE PRESIDENT. There is the politician in the group. MR. ARMSTRONG. We are sorry you missed that. THE PRESIDENT. You knew that, too? MR. ARMSTRONG. We heard about the rain. We haven’t learned to control the weather yet, but that is something we can look forward to. THE PRESIDENT. Well, I can only summarize it because I don’t want to hold you now. You have so much more to do. You look great. Do you feel as great as you look? MR. ARMSTRONG. We feel great. THE PRESIDENT. Frank Borman feels you are a little younger by reason of having gone into space. Is that right? Do you feel a little bit younger? MR. ARMSTRONG. We are younger than Frank Borman. THE PRESIDENT. He is over there. Come on over, Frank, so they can see you. Are you going to take that lying down? ASTRONAUTS. It looks like he has aged in the last couple weeks. COL. FRANK BORMAN. They look a little heavy. Mr. President, the one thing I wanted–you know, we have a poet in Mike Collins. He really gave me a hard time for describing the words "fantastic" and "beautiful." I counted them. In 4 minutes up there, you used four "fantastics" and three "beautiful." THE PRESIDENT. Well, just let me close off with this one thing: I was thinking, as you know, as you came down, and we knew it was a success, and it had only been 8 days, just a week, a long week, that this is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely, and also, as I am going to find on this trip around the world, and as Secretary Rogers will find as he covers the other countries in Asia, as a result of what you have done, the world has never been closer together before. We just thank you for that. I only hope that all of us in Government, all of us in America, that as a result of what you have done, can do our job a little better. We can reach for the stars just as you have reached so far for the stars. We don’t want to hold you any longer. Anybody have a last–how about promotions? Do you think we can arrange something? MR. ARMSTRONG. We are just pleased to be back and very honored that you were so kind as to come out here and welcome us back. We look forward to getting out of this quarantine and talking without having the glass between us. THE PRESIDENT. Incidentally, the speeches that you have to make at this dinner can be very short. If you want to say "fantastic" or "beautiful," that is all right with us. Don’t try to think of new adjectives. They have all been said. Now, I think incidentally that all of us, the millions who are seeing us on television now, seeing you, would feel as I do, that, in a sense, our prayers have been answered, and I think it would be very appropriate if Chaplain Piirto, the Chaplain of this ship, were to offer a prayer of thanksgiving. If he would step up now.

7.23.69

July 23, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | Leave a Comment 

 

 

 

Battered but unbowed: The post-splashdown Apollo XI command module Columbia.

With one day to go before the anniversary of Apollo XI’s splashdown, TNN remembers another 20th Century triumph of American ingenuity, technology, and talent.

Les Paul and Mary Ford are introduced by Alistair Cooke on a 1953 broadcast of the legendary CBS show Omnibus. "How High the Moon," was written by Morgan Lewis and Nancy Hamilton in 1940.  The Pauls’ unique multitracked version spent twenty-five weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 —nine of them at Number One— in the spring and summer of 1951.

The fact that today’s average cellphone packs greater computer power than the entire Apollo XI command module puts Les Pauls’ Rube Goldbergish reel-to-reel recorders in some technological perspective.

Les Paul, a true National Treasure, celebrated his 94th birthday last month.  Despite a stroke and crippling arthritis in his fingers, he performs Monday nights at Iridium on Broadway in New York.

7.22.69

July 22, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | Leave a Comment 

Day Two of the long voyage home.

That’s One Small Step For Oops….

July 21, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | 3 Comments 

Say What?:  “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
As Neil Armstrong later observed: “I didn’t intentionally make an inane statement . . . certainly the ‘a’ was intended, because that’s the only way the statement makes any sense.”

The first words spoken on the Moon were either misstated or mistransmitted.

The now-famous phrase —”That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”— isn’t what Neil Armstrong intended to say as he lowered his left leg onto the lunar surface.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”  may sound sort of stirring.  But, as the astronaut subsequently admitted, it makes absolutely no sense.

“Damn, I really did it.  I blew the first words on the Moon, didn’t I?” he is supposed to have asked NASA officials on his return to Earth.

What he intended to say, of course, was: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Depending on the version you embrace, it was either the excitement of the moment or the vagaries of radio communications that led to the dropping of the crucial “a.”

A couple of years ago, acoustics expert Peter Shann Ford put the 1969 Lunar tape through some modern testing and claimed to have found the missing indefinite article buried in the interspace static.  He met with Mr. Armstrong, who said that “I have reviewed the data and Peter Ford’s analysis of it and I find the technology interesting and useful.  I also find his conclusion persuasive.”

On further reflection, however, he was more conscientious and less certain than even this restrained endorsement indicated.  He told his biographer Peter Hansen:  “It doesn’t sound like there was time for the word to be there. On the other hand, I didn’t intentionally make an inane statement . . . certainly the ‘a’ was intended, because that’s the only way the statement makes any sense.”

Diagram illustrating Peter Shann Ford’s article “Electronic Evidence and Physiological Reasoning Identifying the Elusive Vowel “a” in Neil Armstrong’s Statement on First Stepping onto the Lunar Surface.”  The article’s Abstract stated: “Electronic voice signal analysis of Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s statement on first stepping onto The Moon reveals the presence of an ‘a’ sound after his words, ‘That’s one small step for’.  Physiological reasoning describes the expression of this vowel sound int he lingual-buccal-labial transition from the terminal consonant ‘r’ in ‘for’ to the initial consonant ‘m’ in ‘man’.”

This largely unheralded controversy is more interesting —and far less disturbing— than that surrounding NASA’s “loss” of the “original” Moon landing video.  People of Earth (and here, although I use Yoko Ono’s phrase,  I speak on behalf of all fellow Earthlings) were awed by Apollo’s achievement; but we were underwhelmed by the grainy substandard picture transmission and staticky audio.  “You can put a man on the Moon but you can’t send back a primetime quality picture? What’s up with that?” was a widespread attitude once the initial excitement had passed.

And at some point, the question “What’s wrong with this picture?” assumed literal as well as figurative meaning.  The ersatz quality of the event’s video undoubtedly fueled the conspiratorialist fires as, in at first surprising and then depressing numbers, many people decided that the whole thing was a hoax.

A survey reported in last Sunday’s Telegraph (London) revealed that one in four Britons don’t believe Apollo XI left Cape Kennedy much less went to the Moon.  A 1999 Gallup poll found that 6 percent of Americans shared that skepticism, and there’s no reason to think that number has decreased in the intervening decade.  (Although conspiratorialists no doubt wonder why a more recent survey hasn’t been taken.)  A Google search last week for “Apollo moon landing hoax” elicited 1.5 billion results.  (Admittedly some of them represented pure research —mine, for example, is now the one and a half billionth plus one— but still…..)

So NASA’s recent —and, dare I say it, convenient— discovery of the “lost” Moon Landing footage will serve to fan some flames of doubt even while it clarifies things for the rest of us.

In fact, the original footage hasn’t been “found.”   It is still lost and was probably erased or recorded over in the 1970s or ’80s during a tape-shortage at NASA.  (Talk about an explanation that raises more questions than it answers.)

The video images recorded by the camera the astronauts took to the Moon were in a superduper new non-standard format that couldn’t be transmitted over the air on Earth in any case.  So they were beamed back to a NASA station in Australia (which happened to be the nearest point on earth during the time of transmission) where they were reconverted into terrestrial quality and then rebroadcast.  Each conversion degraded the images and the rest is either history or conspiracy depending on your point of view.

For the last few years —in anticipation of the 40th anniversary—  a concerted search was made to find as much material as close to the original as possible.  Caches were discovered in NASA’s own vaults, in Australia, and at a CBS studio in Houston.  Lowry Digital, a Hollywood company that specializes in restoration (their work includes Citizen Kane) set to work restoring more than two hours of this material.  The complete work will be released in September, but excerpts of the critical moments were made available for the Anniversary:

The churlish will complain that the restored footage is better but still not very good.  And the conspiratorial will complain that the “restored” footage remains completely unconvincing:

7.21.69

July 21, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | Leave a Comment 

Two triumphs of 20th Century American technology.

Nixon, Cronkite, Apollo 11, And “The Sea Of Tranquility”

July 20, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth, News media, Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

In July 1989, on the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, former Nixon speechwriter and then New York Times columnist William Safire wrote that he helped work in the lines for RN’s phone call to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (the phone call was posted here by Frank Gannon earlier today). According to Safire, the theme was inspired by the words of the late legendary newsman Walter Cronkite:

That night, watching the moon landing at home, poking my 5-year-old son awake every few minutes so he could tell his children he saw the great event, I heard Walter Cronkite say the landing site would be near the Sea of Tranquillity. It struck me that the President could use that phrase, and I called the White House duty officer to pass on to Mr. Nixon the tranquillity theme.

Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed, pranced about on the moon, made history, and took a call from the President that began with that thought. I felt the thrill peculiar to White House speechwriters: in this case, my message had gone a quarter-million miles. Unfortunately, my son had drifted off.

(Hat Tip: Tom Van Oosterom)

McGovern-Cronkite ‘72?

July 20, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Apollo XI XLth, Democratic Party, In Memoriam, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, TV News, TV News Personalities, U.S. History, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

A few minutes ago the fortieth anniversary arrived of the moment when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface. For most American TV viewers that awe-inspiring night, the voice commenting on the images that were seen over the next several hours belonged to Walter Cronkite of CBS, who died on Friday. His wholehearted enthusiasm for the space program and its accomplishments was deep and lasted throughout his life; in his 1996 autobiography A Reporter’s Life he cites the Apollo missions and the opening to China as among the accomplishments during the presidency of Richard Nixon that he admired the most.

However, Cronkite did not like what he described as the participation of RN and Vice President Spiro Agnew in “a conspiracy to destroy the press’s credibility.” On the air, as anchorman for the CBS Evening News, he did not offer an opinion directly on Agnew’s 1970 speeches criticizing television coverage of the Nixon White House or criticisms leveled by other figures in the Administration; this was left to Eric Severeid.

But in private, Cronkite, a thoroughgoing liberal, found much to dislike about the Nixon policies. And in some parts of New York City and within the Beltway, his attitudes were known.

Last year, as Barack Obama looked over his vice-presidential possibilities, former Senator George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, published an op-ed in the New York Times reminiscing about the hours after he was chosen by his party’s convention in Miami Beach, as the delegates waited for the other half of the ticket to be selected.

McGovern says that he had already been turned down by former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Edmund Muskie, whom he had defeated in the sometimes bitterly contested primaries. After receiving the nomination, his next choice was Sen. Ted Kennedy, who declined, but suggested Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri instead.

McGovern then moved on to Sargent Shriver, but learned that the former Peace Corps director was in the Soviet Union and could not be reached before 4 pm, when the choice had to be announced. He then asked Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota (who would become Jimmy Carter’s running-mate four years later), but Mondale declined, also recommending Eagleton as the nominee.

McGovern’s next choice was Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, who answered that although he would be honored to be the first Jewish nominee on a major-party ticket, he was about to get married and could not juggle a honeymoon with a national campaign. (This brings to mind the 2004 race, in which some of the supporters of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, still a bachelor in those days, were actively seeking a spouse for him in the event that he got out of the single digits in the polls.)

McGovern writes that he then telephoned Mayor Kevin White of Boston, who accepted at once, but was then vetoed by John Kenneth Galbraith (a member of the convention’s Massachusetts delegation), who claimed there would be a walkout if White was selected.

It was at this point that Frank Mankiewicz, the senior member of the McGovern inner circle, remarked: “Walter Cronkite was just named the most trusted man in America. What about him?”

The idea was tossed back and forth between those in the room, who, besides McGovern and Mankiewicz, included campaign manager Gary Hart and pollster Pat Caddell. Nowadays, when Tom Brokaw is routinely mentioned as possible Presidential timber should he ever care to emerge from retirement, and Rush Limbaugh, every four years, has to remind his legions of Dittoheads that he is disinclined to move from Florida to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue “because I can’t afford the pay cut,” it’s hard to recall a time when newspaper publishers like Frank Knox and William Randolph Hearst were the only figures in the media who received serious consideration for the White House (or, as in the case of Warren G. Harding, were actually elected).

But in 1972, it was less usual to imagine TV personalities in electoral office at a high level. True, Ronald Reagan, after years on G.E. Theater and Death Valley Days, was the sitting Governor of California, but at the time McGovern was making his choice no liberal thought that Reagan could ever reach the Oval Office. So the nominee and his associates set aside the choice of Cronkite for the vice-presidency as unrealistic.

But, says McGovern: “I later learned from Walter that he would have accepted. I wish I had chosen him.” Instead, after being turned down by Sen. Gaylord Nelson, he chose Eagleton, who later was forced to quit the ticket, then Shriver.

The idea of Cronkite being on the 1972 Democratic ticket is still an intriguing one for connoisseurs of alternate history. All through McGovern’s progress to the nomination, it was clear that despite being a South Dakotan he was having trouble appealing to middle-American voters – as Nixon staffers Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman would say, he didn’t “play in Peoria.” Could Cronkite, who’d spent his childhood in Missouri (and his adolescence and young manhood in Texas, which would have been of no small consequence were he on the ticket), have been able to reach those voters?

There’s also the matter of Watergate. In September and October of 1972, McGovern often would discuss the articles appearing in the Washington Post about the break-in and its background, but the reaction from the electorate was tepid and indifferent. That October, Cronkite devoted over half of a CBS Evening News broadcast to Watergate, but that presentation had little impact. Had Uncle Walter been able to cast aside an impartial tone and appear in commercials speaking of Watergate in the way he spoke, in 1968, of what he saw as the failure of the Vietnam War, what would have been the impact of his words?

It seems unlikely that McGovern could have prevailed even with such a revered figure on the ticket – RN’s popularity was high in the summer and fall of ‘72 not just because of his trips to China and the Soviet Union, but because the economy was (temporarily) thriving. But undoubtedly the Democratic ticket would have carried more states than just Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Cronkite’s presence could have secured the Northeast, California and the Northwest, and the states that were part of what was just beginning to be called the Rust Belt.

Here, it should be mentioned that the McGovern camp’s contemplation of Cronkite was not the first time that he’d been mooted as a political prospect. In 1967, Sen. Robert Kennedy reportedly asked Cronkite if he’d be interested in challenging the other New York senator, Republican Jacob Javits. And in the spring of 1980, Rep. John Anderson, as he dropped out of the GOP presidential primaries and prepared to launch an independent bid, let it be known that he would like Cronkite as his running-mate, since it was already known that the newscaster, under the policy then in effect at CBS, would soon have to retire. But Cronkite, according to an article appearing in Time, dismissed the notion:

“Oh, yes, I’ve daydreamed about [running for office],” Cronkite says. “As I’ve daydreamed about sailing around the world—or rather, not as much, because I have thought of sailing around the world.”

His thinking goes like this: “Obviously anybody in any profession has a perfect right to get into politics. But one shouldn’t as a journalist serve two masters. There’s a basic conflict of interest—it’s a bad idea. I’ve been approached by both sides. Some are sincere, but others are flatly cynical, wanting to take advantage of a name that requires no buildup, no posters. Popularity on TV might have great appeal, but I don’t have any policy on how to run the country.”

So it’s clear that when Cronkite later told McGovern that he would have accepted a spot on the Democratic ticket in 1972, he was speaking with the benefit of hindsight, after the major part of his career in the media was finished, and that it isn’t that easy to assume that he would have made the jump, not long after the halfway point of his tenure telling us the way it was. Still, the two names on a tin button seem to linger in the mind’s eye.

Now And Then

July 20, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | Leave a Comment 

President Obama welcomed the Apollo XI crew to the White House today to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing

On 5 November 1969, RN welcomed the Apollo XI crew on the South Lawn at the conclusion of their international goodwill tour that brought them to twenty-four countries in forty-five days.  RN said:

We have noted from the press the magnificent receptions they have received all over the world, in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, and in Europe. We know that the crowd gathered here on the White House lawn is not as large as some you have seen, but the hearts of the American people are here, and through us, we are trying to indicate to you our appreciation, not only for what you did in your travel to the moon, but also what you did for the cause of peace and better understanding through your travel on this earth.

We have invited our astronauts and their wives to come to the White House, spend the afternoon and the evening, a quiet dinner, and spend the night. We think that after all they have done publicly, it is time that they had an evening by themselves and why not in “everybody’s house,” the White House of the United States of America.

Moonstruck

July 20, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth | Leave a Comment 

Today’s Telegraph supplies some information about Apollo 11:

* As the Eagle landing module was descending towards the Moon’s surface, Armstrong and Aldrin realised they had overshot the intended landing spot by miles and were heading for an area strewn with boulders. In manoeuvring to avoid hitting the rocks, they came to within a minute of running out of fuel for the descent and having to abort the mission.

* After the Eagle landed, Aldrin, a Presbyterian, recited from the Bible and took wine and a small wafer from a home communion kit given to him by his pastor.

* Neil Armstrong may have been the first man to walk on the Moon, but Buzz Aldrin was the first man to urinate there. While millions watched on live television, Aldrin relieved himself a tube fitted inside his space suit.

* The astronauts had trouble planting the American flag in the Moon’s hard surface, worried it would fall over on live television. As they blasted off, Aldrin later recalled, the Stars and Stripes flag was knocked over in the blast from Eagle’s ascent engines.

* The mineral, armalcolite, discovered during the first Moon landing and later found at various locations on Earth, was named after the three Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins.

* When the astronauts took off their helmets after their moonwalk, they noticed a strong smell, which Armstrong described as “wet ashes in a fireplace” and Aldrin as “spent gunpowder”. It was the smell of moondust brought in on their boots.

* After returning to the landing module, Aldrin accidentally broke the switch used to activate the ascent engines. After initial concern they managed to activate the switch using a ball-point pen.

* An estimated 600 million people watched the Apollo 11 landing live on television, a world record until 750 million people watched the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981. (Source: Guinness World Records)

* After returning to Earth the astronauts were put in quarantine for three weeks for fear they may have brought back unknown pathogens from the Moon.

* The Apollo space programme cost was given as $25.4 billion, around $150 billion (£93bn) in today’s money.

* One of President Nixon’s speechwriters had prepared an address entitled: “In Event of Moon Disaster”. It began: “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay to rest in peace.” If the launch from the Moon had failed, Houston was to close down communications and leave Armstrong and Aldrin to their death.