Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11

by James Donovan

And if it wasn’t possible and they didn’t come back, there was a plan for that too. Frank Borman, who had retired from the astronaut corps to become NASA’s liaison with the White House, suggested to Nixon’s speechwriter William Safire that he prepare a speech for the president in case the mission went badly and Armstrong and Aldrin were left stranded on the moon. Safire composed a short address that began, “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace”; it ended with an homage to lines written by Rupert Brooke, a British poet who fought in World War I: “For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.” The president would telephone each of the new widows before the statement. Afterward, a clergyman would treat their deaths as a burial at sea and commend their souls to “the deepest of the deep.”