Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon 48 years ago - here's the speech Nixon would have read if they'd died
- Three Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon and safely returned to Earth in July 1969.
- NASA knew the mission was very risky, so the White House prepared remarks in case the astronauts died.
- President Nixon's speechwriter, William Safire, drafted the backup speech, titled "IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER", which was publicly released 30 years later.
Forty-eight years ago this month, people around the world were glued to their TVs and radios as the first astronauts landed on the moon.
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins - the crew of NASA's Apollo 11 mission - blasted into space atop a giant Saturn V rocket on July 16, 1969. About a week later, on July 24, they safely splashed down in the North Pacific Ocean.
Although the plucky astronaut crew made the feat look easy, NASA knew better: This was easily the most perilous voyage in history.
So, shortly before the mission, Apollo 8 astronaut and White House liaison Frank Borman called President Nixon's speechwriter, William Safire.
At first, Safire didn't understand what Borman meant - he told NBC that it sounded like "gobbledygook" - but Borman quickly clarified.
"I can hear [Borman] now: 'Like what to do for the widows,'" Safire said. In short, Borman wanted a backup speech ready in case the Apollo 11 crew died.
The moment where death was most likely was Armstrong and Aldrin's launch off the moon's surface on July 21, when they returned to lunar orbit and met up with Collins inside the Command Module.
"But if they couldn't [launch], and there was a good risk that they couldn't, then they would have to be abandoned on the moon, left to die there," Safire told interviewer Tim Russert of NBC.
"Mission Control would then have to - to use their euphemism - 'close down communication,' and the men would have to either starve to death or commit suicide," he said. "And so we prepared for that with a speech that I wrote, and the President was ready to give that."
Two days into the moon mission - on July 18, 1969 - Safire sent a draft of his "IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER" speech to H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff.
Here's the full text, which first came to light in 1999:
You can see pictures of the original typewritten remarks at the US National Archives site.
Safire told NBC that the success of the moon missions gave a false sense of safety about what NASA was trying to do, and that the "Challenger" space shuttle disaster was a grim wake-up call.
"We realized what enormous risks that were being run buy these astronauts," he said. "They lay their lives on the line, every time."