In an alternate universe, probably the one where Mickey Dolenz was the Fonz on Happy Days and Eric Stoltz was Marty McFly in Back to the Future (and, oddly enough, the Dude in The Big Lebowski), the Apollo 11 astronauts didn't make it home.
In politics it pays to prepare for any and all contingencies. For all his faults Nixon was a beast when it came to politics, so it doesn't surprise me that he had a separate speech prepared just in case the first humans to walk on the moon didn't make it back. And like all good political speeches, he didn't write it. Someone else did. Regardless, that's quite a level of preparation.
It's a poetic dirge to the potential loss of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. I like the part about "mankind's most noble goal." It is, by the way. Our other goals are usually backwards and fucked seven ways to Sunday, but "the search for truth and understanding" is a pretty noble one. I find it odd that they didn't include Michael Collins in that speech, but he didn't go to the moon. He just sat in the module, so I guess they figured they could get him back home. It must have been odd for him. Just by not doing the thing he had a better chance of survival, but by not doing that thing he didn't get to join the others in making history. Hell, if I didn't mention his name, would you have known it? Everyone knows Armstrong and Aldrin, but who thinks about Collins? Google his name, and one of the questions that comes up is, like some depraved Jeopardy question, "Who was the forgotten astronaut of 1969?"
I wonder if he ever read this speech, and if so, what he thought of it. Quantum physics is a weird fucking thing, and it seems to support the idea of a multiverse. I wonder if he thought about the possibility that an alternate version of himself had to say goodbye to his friends and colleagues, leaving their corpses on the moon in a fashion very much like Tommy Lee Jones at the end of Space Cowboys. I'll bet it's the same universe where Robert Englund played Luke Skywalker and Col. Kilgore . . .
OK, yeah. I fucking referenced Space Cowboys. What of it? I enjoy that one. I recognize I'm in the minority on that, but I usually am. Nothing new there.
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