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Did Neil Armstrong Say "For a Man" or "For Man?" - Here's Your Answer


DonRocks

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On 2/18/2018 at 3:25 PM, DonRocks said:

And I'm waffling back-and-forth about whether Neil Armstrong should have left out the "a" - to heck with grammar, it has better cadence and it's more poetic without it; yet, it's too BIG of a statement not to get right.

Jun 5, 2015 - "Did Neil Armstrong Really Say, 'That's One Small Step for a Man?" by Karen Kaplan on latimes.com

In terms of whether or not he *did* say it, if he says he did, he did - I'm certain he had this rehearsed well in advance, so why not believe him? I personally hear an ever-so-slight change in pitch towards the end of "for" - his voice goes down almost a half tone from E to something close to E-flat at the end of the word, which lends credence to his having said it.

So there!

Seriously, say it out loud a few times (using just "for man") - let your voice drop ever-so-slightly towards the end of the word "for" - that makes it sound like "for a"; if you keep the same pitch, and then raise it when you say "man," that makes it sound like there's no "a" - doggone it, this is a limitation of the written word: It would be so much easier if I could just say it for you and let you hear, rather than fumble around trying to describe it. Does anyone understand what I'm saying? Listen to the slight drop in pitch (keep repeating the first 10 seconds until you hear it).

If anyone thinks lowering the tone of "for a" doesn't sound like "for," I urge you to subscribe to Hulu, and watch this episode of "Route 66," with 13:40 remaining. The dialog goes, "And now, what's right for a man ...." and it sounds *exactly* like, "And now, what's right for man ...."

See for yourselves. The episode is "Go Read a River," and even though John Larch says "for a man," it sounds just like "for man." Turn on the subtitles to make it easier to see.

Really, the fact that Armstrong *always* insisted that he said "for a" pretty much seals the deal, don't you think? He didn't ad-lib this line - no way - it was much too important not to have thought out in advance.

I inserted a space in the URL so it wouldn't self-resolve here.

https:// www.hulu.com/watch/617871

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I dont care if he choked the line or not..... he came through in the clutch when he needed to! Most people do not know how close the mission was to failure and what Armstrong did to land that LEM! If you go back to the movie The Right Stuff, the original Mercury 7 astronauts were given a space vehicle that had no window and no control stick... they were just as they so eloquently put it "Spam In A Can".  So they actually went on strike and refused to train further unless they could get those 2 things they said any pilot of any craft should have.... a way to view the horizon and some way of steering the capsule. NASA acquiesced and so the program continued with those things on all manned spacecraft. Jumping all the way ahead to the first manned moon landing, the descent of the LEM was controlled by a computer which quickly became overwhelmed by too much data inputting too fast and hence it was not keeping up with the real time situation which as Armstrong could see would mean they were LANDING IN A FIELD OF GIANT BOULDERS almost certainly capsizing the module and making the 2 men inside either dead on arrival or stranded on the moon with a broken ship. Armstrong had the BALLS to switch off the computer and take the joystick in hand..... with only a little over a minutes worth of fuel as I recall.... with the whole world waiting... and the entire space program and his life on the line.... he began to fly laterally at 45 degrees over the moons surface, using only his pilots skills and his guts,  looking out the window for a place to land...quickly burning through his fuel supply with  copilot Buzz Aldrin talking to him constantly giving him data......  if he couldnt find a landing site, he could have hit an ABORT button to resend the craft back into orbit but then the mission was over and a failure..... with minimal fuel left he saw his spot and set the craft down manually with dust flying everywhere... and using the shadow of the spacecraft on the lunar surface to help guide him.....heart rate monitors back at NASA on the astronauts were going crazy.  The guy saved the whole damned space program with that one minute of the best flying ever.....so if he did or didnt goof the line.... I do not care.  Here is one of Americas Finest and a guy thank GOD who had THE RIGHT STUFF!!!!! And thanks also to those first 7 guys who stood up to NASA and got Armstrong the control stick and window that made it possible for him to land that bird! 

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